


Knives in the Heart

by HVL



Series: To Be Human [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action & Romance, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, F/M, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not Avengers:Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Clint Barton, Protective James “Bucky” Barnes, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Spies & Secret Agents, mfm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-02-09 09:12:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 50
Words: 387,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18635167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HVL/pseuds/HVL
Summary: Natasha Romanoff is home in New York, with the Avengers—or some of them anyway. A fugitive, her presence must remain anonymous especially as one by one, the other Avengers make their way home and to a sense of normality—even Bucky is well on his way to earning a pardon.While the guys do what they can, they're already struggling to navigate difficult waters. Steve and Bucky have even done a little house hunting in Brooklyn, which she steadfastly refuses to join in. Worse, friction soon rises amongst the reuniting team. Tony introduces her to Peter Parker hoping to solve two problems with one friendship. Yet she remains in limbo, and must sit back and watch as the missions roll in and Avengers roll out.





	1. Splintered Mind

**Chapter One**

**Splintered Mind**

**Natasha**

The sun edged across the horizon in front of her as she ran. Insomnia and frustration sent her out of the Tower to run, and she’d followed her favorite route up through Central Park, then back again. The chill slicked over the raw images her brain kept on a loop even as the steady pound of her feet helped erode the tension embedded so deep into her muscles she would likely never relax again.

A week.

A week since Ross had been outed to the committee and the world. Congress had called for hearings. The President had called for his resignation. The U.N. called for his arrest. The public salivated for all the dirty details courtesy of the press excoriating him.

The headlines were hard to miss. Every news program lead with his name, or some new salacious detail—most was pure speculation. But Natasha hadn’t been forgotten in the fuss. No, she might be the second or third story, but she was still up there. Any time they floundered for something more on Ross they wanted to dissect whether or not the Black Widow had truly tricked him or was really that unstable.

If only winning hadn’t meant losing. Still, the bargain remained acceptable in her book. Barely thirty minutes after the recordings enjoyed their first public hearing, the U.N. Committee struck a deal with Steve that included skipping house arrest and public monitors. They dumped the whole mess at Ross’ feet.

The Avengers were once again legal and back in business.

Well, all except for her. The warrants were still out there, multiple governments declared their intention to call for her extradition, and the espionage charges were just waiting to loop their noose around her neck. No, Natasha Romanoff aka Natialia Romanova aka Black Widow remained persona non grata or as she was beginning to think of herself—the Avengers’ dirty little secret that not all knew she was there.

Currently, it was on a need to know basis and limited to Tony, Steve, James, and Clint. She’d spoken to Clint on the phone once and over text messages several times, but he was at the Compound undergoing physical therapy and recuperation. Laura and the kids were due to arrive in the next couple of days, which meant she really had to keep her distance.

The Compound security kept the press away, but they were still camped at the gates trying to get the money shots of returning Avengers. They’d gotten a picture of Sam the day before despite his attempt to slip in unnoticed by flying in. The photo was on the front page of all the news sites before lunchtime.

Steve had left to meet him and hadn’t returned until late. She’d pretended to be asleep rather than catch up on all things Sam. It was petty and selfish, and she hadn’t even been sure why she’d done it except…

 _Admit it Romanoff, you’re jealous._ The word was close, but not quite the right fit. She concentrated on her breathing as she followed the circuit. More and more runners had poured into the park over the last half hour. She’d peel off toward the south entrance and Columbus Circle when she got there. Even with the photo static veil and a knit cap to cover her red hair, she needed to play it cool.

Steve had been thrilled Sam was back, both because he was no longer on the run but because he’d also missed him. Oddly enough, when he’d left—James seemed as irritated as she felt. It helped, she’d been able to concentrate on him rather than why it unsettled her.

Still, it was stupid that it even bothered her. She had friends, why shouldn’t Steve? He’d _missed_ Sam. He was allowed to do that. James hadn’t even really discussed it, he’d just settled into one of his silent moods. Those had occurred with increasing frequency—maybe because he was getting more sleep. The deep shadows beneath his eyes eased, but didn’t disappear entirely. Though the last three nights, she hadn’t found him up when she’d risen.

Currently, they were sharing a suite on Steve’s floor, with her in the extra bedroom. The guys hadn’t said a word when she’d gone to sleep by herself that first night and to be honest, she wasn’t sure why she’d carved out the spot. As the days went by, Steve was absent from the Tower more often than in it and James and she developed the routine that Steve fell in with when he made it in. They had their own rooms, shared a common space, and ate most of their meals with Tony when he was at the Tower.

Sweat soaked through her top and she’d already unzipped her hoodie to let the winter air cool her as she followed the split in the path to angle south. It was weirdly like being at the chalet, but not. It was almost like coming home, and yet at the same time…

 _I’m not supposed to be here. I have no place here._ The line of thinking had dogged her every move. Withdrawing from the guys was just the first step. Tony had immersed himself into working on the amendments to the Accords, a project he’d invited her to participate in but she remained wary. If she assisted and that came out, it could potentially upset the delicate balance the Avengers struck with oversight.

Steve had been on the phone to Scott Lang, inviting him out to the Compound full time if he wanted and they were working on bringing Wanda home. Surprisingly—or maybe not so much—she’d been resistant to the idea. He’d also been meeting with everyone from the president to local politicians to diplomats. Everyone wanted a piece of Captain America. T’Challa was scheduled to visit in the next week or two.

And James…James was due to make an appearance at the Department of Defense, to receive not only the honors and awards due the former Sergeant and POW, but to begin the official and legal process to declare James Buchanan Barnes alive. Steve would be going with him, and probably Sam, too now that he was back.

Natasha would be staying at the Tower.

And it was why she hadn’t been able to sleep.

It was only the first of many such occasions where they would be out there, and she would be stuck inside her glass and chrome skyscraper prison.

_What was that about not being a cell?_

She was out of the park and weaving through the growing pedestrian traffic around Columbus Circle. Better to get back and inside before the usual crowd made an appearance. Fans had taken to camping out during the day hoping for a sighting of one of the heroes, or better, one of the returning heroes. They could get within five hundred feet of the Tower, which they couldn’t with the Compound. It meant even with a photo static veil, she didn’t dare leave during the day. Everything that happened from delivery trucks to the mailman showed up on social media.

No, she needed to keep a non-existent profile and she pushed it by waiting for sun up to return. Though as she slowed to a fast walk, scanning the sidewalks, street, and surroundings, she’d enjoyed watching the sunrise unfolded through the breaks in the trees and curves in the path.

Another day.

She was still here.

Why did it feel like a defeat?

A couple of tourists had settled on a blanket, phones and coffee cups in hand about fifteen feet from the front door. She kept walking, circling back to arrive at a different angle. Her phone buzzed, not for the first time, but since she wasn’t running, she slid it out of her armband and read the screen.

_Garage entrance is clear, Ms. Romanoff._

Friday.

Of course, she’d caught sight of her. She slipped along the path toward the drive for the underground garage. It wasn’t open to the public, and most of the time it wasn’t camped. She made two circuits, gaze on her six and verifying she hadn’t picked up any trace of a hanger on before she made her way down the ramp, all her attention on the phone with a version of maps up in case someone intercepted.

As soon as she was in the shadows of the garage entrance, she pushed the side door open and slipped inside. Leaning against the closed door, she blew out a breath. Following the hallway, she skipped the door for the stairs and went to call for the elevator, but it opened as she arrived…and Steve stood there, arms folded, wearing the most forbidding expression.

“Sorry Dad, missed curfew again—going to add time to my grounding?” It popped out as she slid inside. Dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket, he looked more like he was on his way out than up but he didn’t exit the elevator.

She gave him a sideways glance, then had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. He wasn’t quite _glaring_ at her, but he definitely wore his Captain America does not approve of you expression. Damn if that didn’t just make her want to ratchet up the crime if she had to do the time.

“Hot date?” She eyed him, because the leather jacket was one of her favorites. It fit him well, and he had on his boots. So he’d probably planned on taking his bike today, no matter that it was late fall and wintry cold even for the time of year.

“No,” he said slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Pretty sure it won’t be anymore.”

Surprise rippled through her, and she leaned against the wall of the elevator as it climbed to their floor. Friday hadn’t even needed to be asked. Steve didn’t add anything and she bit her tongue because currently all that seemed to flow off of it was acid. The run was supposed to take the edge off, so why did she feel worse than when she’d left?

The doors opened and it took every ounce of her discipline not to launch out of the elevator. For the first time since she’d made the choice to walk in the front doors of the Tower after leaving Ross, she wished she’d moved back to her own floor. It was still there, along with what remained of her stuff—mostly in boxes and ready to be taken out. Tony’s legal team managed to prevent them taking her stuff, but no one had put it back.

Maybe that was what she would do with her day. Go fix her floor, then she could set it up…

“Natalia.” James stood by the kitchen, his arms folded and his expression as forbidding as Steve’s had been.

Great.

They were both pissed at her.

She deactivated then stripped off the photo static veil. It stung a little, her skin salty and damp underneath it from the run. The little bite of pain helped pull her mind out of her ass.

“James…” Then lest he think she was a total bitch, she pivoted to look at Steve who’d followed her but hadn’t said a word. “Sorry for downstairs…just…in a mood today.”

“We noticed,” he said, and didn’t try to assure her it was all right. On the one hand, fantastic that she’d finally gotten him to understand forgiving them or absolving them of responsibility related to anything they’d ever done wrong was not always the way to go. But boo because she was spoiling for a fight and he wasn’t going to be the one defusing it.

Fuck.

“Well, good to know I’m getting more transparent. That has to be a plus for someone.” And it came out harsher than she intended, at which point, she wanted to throw her hands up and just go back outside and run the route until she collapsed. Maybe that would take the edge off.

“You’re not transparent at all,” James said, his tone cool and almost flinty. It matched the chill in his eyes. “But you aren’t acting like yourself.”

She shrugged, because what did they want her to say? Even if she could define the conversation they were having, she didn’t want to have it—with either of them. Compartmentalize. She had to just pack away the frustration, the jealousy, and the exhaustion. It was all too distracting anyway. It helped no one, least of all her.

“When do you have to be at the Pentagon?” Because it was today, she hadn’t forgotten how swiftly they’d moved. Ross went down and the Avengers’ star had risen. Everyone rushed to fall into their orbit.

“This afternoon,” he told her, not shifting his posture. If anything, he looked like he held himself perfectly still—not motionless, but suspended with all that energy contained. “We’re flying down, so we don’t have to leave until shortly before and we’ll be back as soon as it’s finished.”

So just a few hours.

She could survive a few hours.

Of course, she could survive a few hours. Disgust unfolded in her gut. Was she really making herself a wreck because she couldn’t go on the field trip? Pathetic. Shunting the feeling away, she nodded.

“Good.” She glanced at Steve, who like James, hadn’t moved. “You and Tony are both going right?” If Clint were better, she’d ask him to go. It was a lot of pressure to put on James, and frankly, she wasn’t sure she trusted all the so called Pentagon fan boys who wanted to do right by the last of the Howling Commandos.

“Yes,” he said, no warmth or assurance in the tone at all. If anything, his brow had furrowed deeper and the disapproval in his eyes radiated off him in waves.

“Great.” Tony and Steve would protect him. She trusted them to do that. They could all take care of themselves. “I’m going to go take a shower. I stink.”

And she wanted to escape whatever the gauntlet was she’d walked back into…

“Natalia…” James halted her before she made it three steps. “You were out most of the night.”

“It wasn’t…”

“You left at two in the morning,” Steve added. “Just went…didn’t leave a note or a message, just gone.”

“I went running,” she kept a fist around her tone, but she also didn’t face them because if they wanted to have this fight they weren’t going to have it with her. “I needed to blow off some steam.”

“For five hours?”

“It wasn’t that long,” she argued, twisting to look at then and James turned a pointed glance to the clock on the wall.

Oh.

Her muscles trembled, and her lungs burned, but she’d only done—three or was it four circuits of the park? She’d done the Outer Park loop, then one of the inner ones…flipping open her phone, she moved to the running app she’d loaded for giggles. The mileage gave her pause.

Oh.

“I guess I had a lot on my mind,” she said, thumbing it closed.

“So much you couldn’t answer the phone or the text messages?” Steve’s voice gentled and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders.

“I was running,” she told them, not that it was an explanation.

Running and arguing with herself about coming back. A part of her wanted to still be out there running.

Not…trapped here.

She’d chosen to be here.

But still, trapped out of choice was trapped.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, then flicked a look at James. He hadn’t relaxed his stance, in fact, if anything, he looked even more aggravated.

“No you’re not,” he called her on it. “You’re annoyed because we’re asking for an explanation.”

“Actually, you’re not. Steve’s giving me the Captain America is annoyed with you look, and you’re wearing your threat assessment one. You are both irritated with me, because I just took off. Fine, that’s on me. Next time I’ll leave a note.”

“Nat…” Steve unfolded his arms and took a step toward her. “We don’t want you to just disappear next time—if something’s eating at you that badly, you can come to me or to Bucky. You know that right?”

How did she tell them she didn’t want to talk about this with them? She didn’t want to talk about it with anyone? “Steve…sometimes I just need to work out what I’m thinking.” Not quite a deflection, but also not the whole truth either. “I…I couldn’t sleep. You’ve been busy and James has a big day today. I really didn’t want to bother either of you.”

Instead of comforting him though, Steve actually appeared even more disappointed than he had in the elevator. James, on the other hand, snorted. “Bullshit. But if that’s all you’re willing to say, go shower. You’re right. You do stink.”

Combative as hell, the words slammed to the floor between them like a proverbial gauntlet. She should just take the out and go, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood there and turned over every piece of data—then checked her phone.

The first message had come in at two-fifteen.

Then two-twenty.

Then two-thirty.

The calls started over the next hour after that.

James.

Steve.

James.

Tony.

Finally Friday.

There was a message from Clint.

Not glaring at them, she flipped it open.

_They’re freaking Tash. Where the hell are you?_

Lips twisting, she contemplated the message. It had come in at four. He hadn’t sent another one. Not yet. Maybe he’d figured she’d needed time. The guys had stopped sending messages around the same time.

 _I’m back. Needed to run. Will call later._ Firing that off, she closed the messages and glanced at them.

“I’m an asshole, I…really needed to run and I got a little lost in my own head.” It stung to admit it. “I didn’t even realize how long I’d been out there.” Which was tantamount to admitting failure. “I’m sorry,” she said, and this time, she actually meant it.

James’ expression relaxed and the expressionless mask melted away as he abandoned the kitchen to head for her, but Steve got there first. She collided with his clean shirt, and then his arms locked around her. Sometimes, she could just get lost in those hugs. Then James had his arms around her, bracing against her back and she was lost in it.

“Guys, I really smell.” And at this range, she couldn’t miss it. Not surrounded by clean male on all sides—yeah, her nose wrinkled. She was probably dehydrated. “And you two are all cleaned up for going out.”

“We’ll survive,” James deadpanned. “Just let us hold you.”

“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve admitted.

Honestly, the reaction left her bewildered, which was not a comfortable emotion even as she tried to contain the others slipping and sliding out of their compartments. The guys compromised her so much. She had to get a handle on this. “Don’t be mad,” she told him, cheek pressed to his chest. The steady thump of his heart beneath her ear. “But why? I just went running.”

“Yeah, at two in the morning, without a word, fell off the grid, with no responses less than a week after you handed yourself over to Ross.” Steve ground out the words like he was chewing glass. “Nothing to worry about.”

“You left your bracelet here, doll,” James said against her back as he eased up. Steve didn’t seem quite ready to let her go. “And we might have woken Tony to check if you had it.”

Great.

“I just grabbed my phone and went,” she told them and wiggled a little to get Steve to release her. His arms tightened for a second, the strength squeezing the air out of her and she huffed up at him. “Steve…breathing isn’t optional.” Even if she could hold her breath for six minutes, she had to have breath to hold.

“Dammit,” he loosened his hold, then cupped her chin. “Don’t _disappear_. Can we make that an agreement?”

“Not going anywhere,” she reminded him. “Pretty much stuck in the Tower if you don’t recall. That’s why you two are going to DC and I’ll be here…”

His expression tightened. “We know that, and neither one of us likes it.”

Closing her eyes, she needed to blot out the worry on his face. Needed to get a fierce rein on the wild stampede of emotions that kept trying to get loose. Bit by bit, she unwound the tension coiled so tight she could probably bounce from the ground on her own and catch one of the Chitauri skiffs.

“I’m going to shower,” she said slowly. “Then coffee and food. Hopefully I will have found the less bitchier side of life by then.”

And later, when they were in DC, she was going to clean up her floor and maybe make a strategic withdrawal there. If not full time, then at least when they were gone. Which would happen more and more—Steve had to lead and James needed his life back.

Exactly what she’d wanted, right?

She gave them a beat to stop her, but Steve lifted his hands as if in surrender and James merely nodded.

Once in her room, she leaned against the door and let her muscles shake. Her legs both threatened to cramp, and a stitch had formed so taut in her side she wanted to double over. Dehydration was a bitch.

In the bathroom, she stripped off her sweat soaked clothes and turned the water on to heat up. After, she filled the small glass on the counter with water, and drained it then repeated the process three more times. Looking at herself in the mirror, she sighed. James wasn’t the only one with dark bruises beneath his eyes.

The hell of it was, she wasn’t even tired. Maybe she should hit the gym and spend some time on the speed bag. Steve hadn’t had time to spar all week and James wasn’t up for that yet. Not that he’d asked since the morning at the chalet when he’d leapt into the ring. Steve ran, and he spent time out at the Compound when not at meetings. He’d been in the gym a few times…hadn’t he?

Hell, she didn’t even know if he’d made it there and she wasn’t going to ask Friday. The monitoring on their floor was set to privacy mode. If she planned to live with the guys, she still didn’t want Friday tracking her every movement. Tony hadn’t objected yet, which boded well for his relationships with James and Steve. They might not be friends, yet, but they weren’t enemies. They all seemed firmly in the allies corner.

Another check in the win column.

She brushed her teeth, then slid into the shower and let the water warm her traumatized muscles. Yoga. She would do some yoga later, and a series of deep stretches because if she sat still at all in the next few hours she was going to be stiffer than a board. On the bathroom counter, her phone buzzed and she scowled.

Shampoo in her hair, she leaned out snag it with two fingers and read the screen.

_Emergency call out. Will see you later._

Steve was gone.

No details. Just—off on a mission. Her gut sank. She typed two words and hit send even if the chances of him reading it while in a rush were low.

 _Be safe_.

Setting the phone down, she ducked her head back under the water and braced her hands on the wall. Steve could handle himself. The current roster had Vision and Tony—likely Sam now that he was back. Not James. Not yet. But she didn’t think it would be long. Clint was still out for medical.

No Wanda.

So just the three of them.

The most indestructible ones—and Sam.

By the time she’d rinsed off and then stepped out of the shower, she had almost all of it back where it belonged. Her breathing was normal, her heart rate steady, and the frayed and tangled edges of confusion neatly clipped off.

Steve was an Avenger. They were all Avengers.

James wasn’t, not yet.

She wasn’t, and probably wouldn’t ever be again.

This was the new normal. She needed to accept it.

_We have what we have, when we have it._

She no longer had being an Avenger.

That was over.

The sooner she accepted it—hadn’t she? Hadn’t she already accepted it? After Leipzig, it was over. The only hope she’d had was to put the others back together.

So, yes. She’d accepted that.

Good.

With a nod, she hung her towel and scooped up her dirty clothes before she paced out of the bathroom. She made it two steps before the shiver over her skin told her she wasn’t alone. Pivoting, she found James sitting on the edge of her bed wearing an open and very appreciative smile.

“Sorry doll, thought you heard me.”

No, he wasn’t sorry at all and he didn’t pretend to look away. But he had probably made noise. She and he had both made an effort in that department because neither of them wanted to stab the other.

“I was thinking,” she told him, and walked over to dump the dirty clothes into the corner hamper before diverting to the dresser.

“Flashbacks?” The quiet question dug her right out of the comfort zone she’d found, and she glanced at him.

“No.” The answer came too swiftly, and the lie underneath it audible to both of them. Then she paused. Had it been a flashback? “I—I couldn’t sleep.” Steve had been out with Sam, and James had been surly all evening. Surly and uninterested in being cajoled out of his mood. They’d been together, but silent. She’d waited him out, and when he’d finally gone to bed all stiff shouldered and rigid, she’d almost been relieved.

Almost.

Then she’d been annoyed with herself.

Blinking, she met his gaze and opened her mouth to repeat the fact she’d had insomnia, but really…she’d lain down. Steve came late and he’d opened her door. She’d heard the elevator long before his steps to her door or it opening. Instead of rolling over and saying hi, she’d lain perfectly still and kept her breathing even. Then he’d closed the door and walked away.

An hour later, she’d been out running. At least, if she went by what time Friday said she’d left and what time Steve came home.

“You don’t know, do you?” The quiet empathy didn’t pity her or demand anything.

“No,” she admitted, and all the fight seemed to drain out of her. “I don’t. I didn’t think so…”

“…But you didn’t hear the phone or answer the calls, and you had no idea how long you were out there.” It wasn’t a question. “What made you come back?”

“The sunrise,” she said, walking over to the bed and sinking down on the edge next to him. She couldn’t be more boneless if someone had cut her strings.

He laid his palm open against his leg and she slid her hand into his, her right into his left. The cool metal slotted between her fingers and then she pressed her head against the hard surface of his shoulder. It was odd how damn comforting the feeling was, and even when James would try to shift her, she was fine with it. With him.

“I screwed up,” she said, staring down at their hands.

“Not irreparably,” he murmured. “Steve was scared, and he’s probably going to be frustrated because he got called and all he wanted to do was have breakfast with us. It hasn’t been the three of us that much this last week.”

It had barely been the two of them. She and James more often than any other combination and they were grinding on each other.

“How’d you figure it out?” Because she’d had no clue.

“The bracelet,” he told her, stroking his thumb against the side of her hand. “You haven’t taken it off once since Stark gave it to you.”

That was true. So why had she…?

“When we called and they activated the tracker and it said it was in here…” He shifted to lean into her a little as he pulled it out of his pocket. “…that’s when I realized it.”

“Did you tell Steve?”

“No,” he said slowly, elongating the syllable as he slipped it over her wrist, waiting until she stroked it twice to get it lock back into place. “He was already worried. If you’d triggered and you were on your own…that would have worried him more. Then Tony and Friday did their facial recognition magic and there you were—running like hell in Central Park.”

She almost laughed, as it was a half-chuckle escaped. “You two sat there and had Friday track me, didn’t you? Kept watching?”

“Maybe,” he dodged a direct answer. “But it was the only way to keep Steve from going out there to run with you—or run after you technically.”

But James hadn’t needed to chase her. He just needed to know where she… “That’s why he was in the elevator.” Dammit. She closed her eyes.

“Don’t be hard on yourself sweetheart, he made it confrontational.”

“How do you know?” She wanted to smack herself. Of course, Steve had made it confrontational. It was what he did when he was upset. She’d scared him, then by showing up and being all right, he’d gotten angry at the lapse.

“Because I know Stevie,” James said flatly, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Now, I’m going to do something remarkable…I’m going to tell you to put on clothes unless we’re going to spend the rest of the day in this bed. And as much as I want you to choose the rest of the day in bed, I have to go to DC.”

And he did not sound like he liked it.

That made two of them.

“If that meeting weren’t so damn important, I’d gladly give you a reason to skip it.” There, she’d said it aloud.

“Steve wasn’t wrong, doll. Neither one of us wants to leave you here.” Another kiss to her temple, then one to her cheek. “Neither one of us wants to be anywhere you aren’t. It’s hard on all of us.”

 _I miss you…_ The words wouldn’t come out. She didn’t dare it admit it. Not even to herself. Better to contain it. James was right there, and she turned and swung her leg over his lap to straddle him. He dropped his hands to her hips and then his mouth was on hers. It was a slow, deep, and sweet kiss. Feathery brushes that grew longer, then deeper and she had her hands in his hair.

The world narrowed to that contact, the softness of his shirt against her breasts and the roughness of his jeans against her thighs. His answering groan was pure sensuous music and the glide of his left hand along her spine left an electric trail of sensation in its wake. She had no idea why they’d been putting this off while almost simultaneously the dormant ache woke… it had been _too long_.

Her heart squeezed, and all the air shoved out of her lungs as ice scored through her and she jerked away. James stilled, his lips parted and his pupils dilated but he focused on her.

“Ya znayu, moya zvezda. Ya znayu,” he whispered. He understood and she blinked rapidly, despising the burn in her eyes. Clinging to him, she buried her face against his throat and he cradled her. “Ya znayu.”

The bittersweet longing opened up inside of her like an old scar, torn open only to find it had never really healed. She didn’t even have all those memories back and yet every time they got close—uncontrollable sadness welled up in her.

It wasn’t fair to him.

She needed to recapture that passion, but all she wanted to do was hold onto him as if someone was going to take him away. They weren’t. No one would. Except—he had to go. He had to go to DC.

The scene from Azzano burned through her mind and she shuddered. James just kept telling her he knew, and he didn’t let go. She had no idea how long she curled up there, just holding onto him for dear life, before the panic subsided. Eventually, James lifted her as carefully as if she were a toddler and then set her on the bed. He stripped off his shirt and before she could admire the chiseled and carved plane of muscle in front of her, he tugged the shirt over her head.

It was so warm, she realized how chilled she’d actually grown if the way the cotton peaked over her nipples wasn’t already a clue. James grinned. “You have to do the panties—I only ever intend to rip them off, not put them on.”

The in your face flirt made her laugh and his grin widened.

“It would serve you right if I just walked around in this all day, and nothing else.” It wasn’t really a threat, especially since she didn’t have to even leave their floor for the rest of the day if she didn’t want to—except to maybe go deal with hers. But that was later…when she needed the distraction.

“You go right ahead, doll.” He tipped his head to the side. “That’s a view I can take with me, but only if you promise to be wearing exactly this when I get back.”

The lusciousness of that promise sent another shiver skating over her. “Depends on how late you get back, Soldier. A girl needs her beauty sleep.”

He snorted, and then snuck a quick caress over her butt as she walked past him. It sent a wave of lust to crash into the longing and she sighed.

“You’re a tease.”

“You just sat on my lap all naked, lush, and warm from the shower and I held you. I’m a saint.” He gave her a little pinch. “Now I’m going to feed you. Come along, malen'kiy pauk.”

She’d tugged open a drawer and pulled out a pair of simple black panties and eyed him. “James?”

“Hmm?” He palmed himself once before he glanced at her, and that move only sent another smile to her lips.

“You really do know, don’t you?”

His gaze softened. “It hurts like hell and feels wonderful in the same breath—it’s too much and never enough.”

Yes. He did.

“We have _time_ now, Natalia. Time to learn each other again.” Something shifted in his gaze as he studied her. “Time and each other.” And Steve, but he didn’t have to say that. They had Steve and he helped so much when he was there, he could buffer their need to cut and slice at each other as they both struggled against the desperation invading them.

Except the last few days suggested they were going to have less time with him, not more.

“We will figure it out,” James told her, as if he could read her mind. “We all need time…together and individually. We need to learn to embrace it.”

Something she hadn’t been doing.

Never looking away, she nodded and then deliberately stepped into the panties and drew them up her legs slowly until his gaze fixed on the motion. When he finally met her eyes once more, she had to bite back the wild grin wanting to burst out.

“You’re cruel.” It wasn’t a judgment.

“You said you wanted to be able to take them off.”

“Yep,” he said with a slow nod. “Cruel. Bring your cruel, curvy ass out here so I can feed you and make myself feel better.”

Running her tongue against her teeth, she didn’t try not to laugh as she sauntered after him. He caught sight of her as he made his way into the kitchen—shirtless thank you very much—and shook his head.

“Mean. Mean.”

“Well I can put on more clothes,” she told him as she settled on the counter and sat cross-legged, uncaring of how the shirt rode up.

“Wouldn’t help,” he informed her, then dabbed a little pancake batter on her nose. He’d made his first set of pancakes four days earlier, and had made them every day since. She wasn’t a huge fan of pancakes every single day, but cooking them made him happy.

“No?”

“No,” he confirmed, heating the griddle then pouring a mug of coffee for her from a freshly brewed pot based on the smell. “You could be in a nun’s habit and I’d still be imagining stripping you out of it.”

He sent her a smoldering look as if he were picturing just that and a lock of hair fell across his eyes. He’d gotten better about taming the length, but he didn’t seem to have any interest in cutting it. Not that she minded in the slightest.

“James,” she rasped, finding that image unexpectedly arousing. “I thought you were Catholic.”

“Lapsed, malen'kiy pauk. Most assuredly lapsed.”

Another laugh escaped, and for the moment, the shadows crowding around in her slipped away. He was right; they had time. Time was a good thing.

A very good thing.

 


	2. Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky focuses on getting Natasha to relax before he has to leave for D.C.

**Chapter Two**

**Soldier**

**Bucky**

 

 

After he set a plate of pancakes in front of her, and stole another kiss, he headed for his room to get a fresh shirt. The plan had been to have breakfast and present her with some ideas for a place in Brooklyn. Steve had started scouting, probably the day after she arrived at the Tower. Bucky got it, Steve wanted their own place—away from the Avengers, and away from the public. He wanted to set down roots.

The Tower security gave him peace of mind, particularly with Natalia remaining on the wanted list. Steve, however, was confident they could get past that and when they did, having a place just for the _three_ of them would be good for them. Bucky had his own ideas about the origin of said desire, but he kept it to himself for now.

Dragging the shirt on, he moved to the open doorway between his bedroom and the living area. His bedroom. Steve’s bedroom. Natalia’s bedroom.

Though he hadn’t said anything directly, Bucky hadn’t missed the look on Steve’s face every time she disappeared into her room and closed the door. It wasn’t a retreat, it was a regrouping. They’d all had a difficult few weeks. Bucky hadn’t even been out of cryo three full weeks yet as hard as it was to believe. He was perfectly content to be patient as long as he could see her every day.

Maybe he needed to set Steve down and talk to him—the night before had been impossible, and today when they should be laughing around the table and looking at the different houses he’d been scouting, Steve had to leave.

Tucking the shirt in, he crossed to the kitchen. Natalia had barely touched the pancakes. Instead, she stared out the windows toward the city. He got it, episodes were draining. They sucked the life right of their marrow. He dragged his shoes against the tile, enough to warn her of his approach.

“Not hungry?” He asked hooking a chair over to sit on and stay right next to her.

“I thought I was,” she murmured, and blinked slowly as if rousing from sleep. “They’re very good.” The last was offered almost as an apology.

“You don’t have to eat for me,” he told her, though he wished she would. “You know, I can call and have them reschedule this thing today. I don’t really want to go anyway. They’re just going to make a fuss.” Or it was a very elaborate ploy to put him under numerous guns with the hope of containing him. The Soldier settled the longer he stayed with Natalia, but neither of them were thrilled with the very formal visit to the Pentagon, a meeting with the Secretary of Defense, along with at least three generals, and possibly some directors of different intelligence services.

“No,” she said slowly. “Not for me. This is important and it’s a critical next step to securing your future.”

“No, it really isn’t,” he told her, settling his hand beneath her damp hair at her nape. The skin there was soft, and he loved to trace it with his fingers—in part because he enjoyed touching her, but more because she allowed the touch. It was a dangerous place to allow contact, and she didn’t flinch or tense.

“James…”

“Hmm,” he chuckled. “I love how you say my name.” It was a caress all its own. Yes, he was Bucky to Steve and that grew in familiarity more every day. He might not ever be as he was in the 40s, but Steve was a very visceral reminder that he had been that man and he still had a friend who would never give up on him. He was Barnes to Stark most days, as well Clint. Though the latter had begun to use Bucky more and more. The former did occasionally.

But for Natalia, he was James and it was a name she could call him. A name seemed a rare and precious commodity to a man who’d spent decades without one and despite the abundance of them at the moment—the one he cherished was the one she smiled when she said.

“Deflection,” she murmured and then nuzzled a kiss to his jaw. “You’re getting better at it.”

“I don’t need to deflect.” He stroked his thumb up and down along the column of her throat. “I just change the subject entirely.”

“Tony worked really hard to get you this pardon.”

“Tony put a bug up some general’s ass and then lit a match. That’s not working hard.” Not that he wasn’t grateful, but Stark didn’t open a vein for him nor should he _ever_ do that for Bucky. “I appreciate his contribution, but I don’t much care about the rest.”

“Not even if it means you get your life back?”

She and Steve kept saying it, but he wasn’t sure they actually understood his answer. For Natalia, he could forgive. She seemed to treasure that he and Steve had a before. More than once she’d drawn a story out of them regarding their spotty youth as she liked to tease. Stories about his family—which he gained more of each day—or about Steve’s as well as their own antics delighted her.

But she couldn’t offer the same in return, nor would either of them expect it of her. No, when he was twelve he kissed a girl for the first time, no matter how badly it went. When she was twelve, she’d already had to seduce Nazi brigade commanders in order to get close enough to kill them.

“I have my life back,” he told her firmly, gripping the back of her head gently to angle her face up so he could meet her gaze. “You’re my life. Steve’s part of it, too. But I have my life back. The rest of it is just noise.”

“That noise would let you join the Avengers, go out the front doors—go to a baseball game or get a hot dog from one of the street vendors.” The barest hint of wistfulness ghosted through her voice.

“Sweetheart…you really think I want to go to a baseball game with a large crowd of people and exposure from 360 degrees?” The dry note was the perfect response, she laughed. “To be fair, I haven’t actually seen a game since ’41. The damn Dodgers aren’t even in Brooklyn anymore—rat bastards.”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip, but another laugh escaped. She did it on purpose, not the laughter. No she didn’t fake it, but she didn’t hide it from him or Steve. No, she let them see her. But it was always a conscious choice and one he treasured.

“Well I’m sure they’ll have games soon.”

He squinted at her, largely because she was adorable, but also because he didn’t want to laugh _at_ her. “You don’t know anything about baseball, do you?”

“I went to a game,” she defended, her nose crinkling. “Steve wanted to see one, and we saw the Nationals play in DC against…someone.”

“Someone.” He nodded sagely. “How’d that game go?”

“A very, very long time. The hot dogs were good, but the chili fries were terrible. I think my favorite part was the kiss cam.”

“Wait, the what?” He blinked. They’d been going over a lot of pop culture references, had he missed one?

“The kiss cam…wait, I can actually show you this one.” She scooted out of the chair and trundled back to her room so he scooped up her plate and set it in the kitchen. Her lack of appetite worried him a little. If she’d been running for hours, she needed fuel. Maybe he could order one of her favorites to be delivered.

“Got it!” She practically skipped back over to the table with her phone in hand. He caught her around the waist, and tugged her over to the sofa and then pulled her right onto his lap as he sat. She swiveled to sit sideways, the action grinding her ass a little too firmly against his cock but one thing the Soldier had in spades was control. “I went to a game with Steve, right?”

“Yes, the Nationals game,” he repeated, marveling at how much lighter her expression had grown. Whatever she intended to share had brightened her mood considerably.

“Right, so apparently they have kiss cams at sporting events—big thing, started in the 80s.” She loaded a video on her phone. “Kiss cams are big jumbotrons—huge screens, and they focus the cameras on random couples in the crowd and then you’re supposed to kiss if you’re on the screen.”

Devilish smile curving her lips, she hit play on the video and he tipped his head to watch but kept her face solidly in his periphery. The ease around her eyes and the constant hint of a smile relaxed him more than the fact she curled against him so easily. She’d been so fucking lost and armed for bear when she’d come back in. Steve had seen it, even if she hadn’t realized he had, he’d seen it and it terrified him more than her disappearance.

The video was of a baseball field, crowded and there were players on the field, and music swelling and then the angle went up to the giant screen. A lovely older couple appeared, and the man immediately leaned over and kissed her. She actually blushed, and Bucky grinned. A little too public for his tastes, but then again—it was sweet.

The next couple showed up and the man actually ignored the woman sitting next to him because he was looking at his phone. So she turned to the man on her other side and he planted one on her. The idiot who wouldn’t kiss her finally noticed and he was glaring. With a guffaw, he squeezed her hip.

“Keep watching.” Natalia’s giggle danced over him.

Two more couples popped up. The first a pair of women, and they definitely gave it a kiss for the ages and the crowd around them cheered. That was definitely something. The next was a guy and his daughter, she couldn’t have been more than four. She bounced up in her seat and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then the camera switched and it was on Steve and Natalia.

He was already laughing. Natalia eyes widened a fraction behind her sunglasses and she glanced at Steve, he’d gone beat red. The flush always started at his ears and even with the hat on, no one could mistake him for anyone else. The crowd around them was cheering. He leaned toward her, then whipped off his cap and covered their faces.

“Did he kiss you?” Bucky sputtered, torn between hilarity over Steve being on a _kiss cam_ and the fact he likely hadn’t given her the goods.

“A very chaste and proper kiss on the cheek,” she said with a laugh, and her eyes sparkled. “So you see—baseball games have their perks.”

Poor Stevie. “Does he know you have this video?”

“Probably not,” she said, with a far too innocent to be believed tone. “Since I found it on YouTube.” She scrolled it up so he could read the title.

“Christ!”

_Captain Sweetness, isn’t he a gentleman?_

“I so need to be the one to show him this,” Bucky decided.

“Ah-ah, this is my teasing material.” She cradled the phone to her chest. “You have plenty of kisses to tease him about. I only have two…well, three.”

“You realize we’re discussing—seriously—the number and quality of kisses we can tease Steve about, right?” Not that it wasn’t hilarious, but…no, no but. It was hilarious.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I do.” Then her smile faded and she glanced at the TV. “Friday…what’s the team’s status?”

“They are currently engaged with terrorists holding Roxxon oil derrick on the Gulf Coast.”

“Thank you Friday, can you give us the news?” The television came on, and Natalia shifted so she could see the screen, but she didn’t abandon his lap. They were getting live feeds from what looked like helicopter-mounted cameras that were getting perilously close to heavy fire and explosions across the oil derrick.

Bucky located Iron Man without issue, and the one called Vision was also readily identifiable, but Steve had to be in the middle of that mess. Natalia split her attention with the screen and her phone. “That derrick is awfully close to the fisheries,” she murmured, eyeing something on her phone then the screen.

“Is that significant?” All the relaxation she’d achieved seemed to whittle away as she focused on the screen. Bucky couldn’t tell how many hostiles they were tangling with, but the heavier firepower from Iron Man and Vision seemed to be curtailed due to the location.

“Just oil drilling right there could pose a significant hazard to the environment. If they have a spill or a fire, it could dump millions of gallons of crude. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened. I just didn’t think they were allowed to be that close.” She shifted to lean her back against his chest, legs crossed as she balanced on his thighs and he wrapped his arms around her.

As she watched the footage, a part of him wanted to turn it off and take her back to playing the kiss cam video or something else. But her laser focus, and the shifting muscle tension in her back told him she wouldn’t be so easily distracted.

It was closing in on lunchtime by the time the news reported the incident contained.

“Friday?” Natalia asked, stirring. “Sitrep?”

“Boss said Captain Rogers is singed but fine, and they lost no hostages. All terrorists contained. He and Vision are working to stabilize the oil derrick.” Then she added, “He also said you should take a nap as you haven’t slept in over forty-eight hours.”

“Can you take a picture of this for me Friday?” She held up her middle finger.

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff. For Boss?”

“Yes, please.”

Bucky pressed his face into her hair and chuckled. “Let’s take a break from the news, then, yes?”

Twisting, she met his gaze and the tired shadows around her eyes gave her a bruised appearance. “What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking a nap,” he told her honestly. “You’re exhausted.”

“I can’t sleep,” she told him.

“Nightmares?” Hell, he got those. And had with increasing frequency as he slept more and more. Though they weren’t truly nightmares, but nightmarish memories. The ones he wanted seemed to remain elusive, though more and more, he just knew things about her that if he concentrated drew the memory to the surface.

“No…it’s not bad dreams or anything, I just—I lay down and my head is full.” She studied him from beneath her lashes. While she didn’t elaborate, he understood. He’d experienced those moments, and sometimes all he could manage then was just to find something to beat in the gym until it passed.

“You can tell me anything,” he reminded her. “I do understand.” He had his own days, sometimes night, too. There were times when it was so full only the Soldier could handle it. He could parse the noise, and make executive decisions. Not ideal, but several decades of memories were gradually unlocking, and most of them were not ones he wanted.

“How long do you think we were together?” The question caught him off guard, and he blinked.

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “Shuri advised me that sleep was the best thing for my memory. The more I get, the more I seem to improve—but I’m not getting the memories back in any kind…rational order.” The Soldier helped him when the disjointed fragments didn’t make sense. If they could apply time to them, it helped with the context.

“You talked to her two days ago, didn’t you?” It was the first time she’d asked, and that was his fault. After the video call, he’d not wanted to discuss it with either of them. Mostly because Shuri had invited him to return to Wakanda. It had settled there and she wanted to do another scan. Shuri and T’Challa were both swell, and he owed them—but he had no desire to return. Not as long as Natalia was in New York. She wasn’t likely to choose to leave Steve either, especially with the pressure mounting on him to put the Avengers back together.

“Yeah, she just wanted to see how I was doing.” He slipped a hand up to her hair. Damp and curling, it took a long time to dry. Sometimes she’d go to sleep with it wet and wake with it in the most unruly profusion of curls. He adored them. Twisting one of the curls around his finger, he pressed a kiss to her nose. This was one of his favorite ways to see Natalia—hair curling, no trace of cosmetics, the hint of freckles visible on her nose, the mole on her cheek a sweet hint of a kiss.

“Does she need to see you at all? I know when they first sent you back, they mentioned you would likely need further care.” Just the barest hint of unease slid under the words.

“Nope,” he told her. “My progress is going well, I’m not experiencing repetitive episodes since the nightmare at the chalet…”

“…and the episode after I said I was going after Ross.” The lack of chastisement, and keeping it to basic facts made the correction digestible.

“Fair, but I’ve been all right since you came back.” He wasn’t going to Wakanda. “If I thought there were any issues, I would tell you.”

She studied him, then lifted a hand to smooth his hair away from his face. A light touch, a gentle one. “I know you would want to tell me, maybe.”

“Natalia…”

“I know, I’m deflecting.”

“And distracting,” he teased. Not that he complained. “But I don’t know how long we might have been together. I spent a lot of time in cryo, and they wiped me. Did you have to remind me of who you were each and every time we met?” How awful would that have been? The struggle to piece it together now frustrated him. How could she have borne remembering when he didn’t?

“That’s if I remembered in between.” What a depressing fucking point. “We met in ’48…and I think I left in ’84. I think.”

“Kind of a weird symmetry,” he told her. “But if you go by those numbers, we could have been together—thirty some odd years.” The idea would take some time to wrap his mind around. “Is that part of what’s filling your head up?”

“A little. It’s like it’s all on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite touch it. Maybe when Tony gets back I’ll talk to him about using BARF again…”

“No,” Bucky said firmly with a shake of his head. “I’d really rather you didn’t.” Ordering her would do no good, and he would never rip the choice from her hands. “It tore you apart last time, doll.” And he didn’t want to see her fall into another coma or suffer the way she had suffered.

“I don’t happen to have a concussion this time,” she argued, but doubt flickered around the edges.

“Natalia…why do you want to take the risk?” He studied her intently. “Truly—we’ve barely settled here…” Barely and Steve wanted to find a place in Brooklyn and Natalia wanted to tear her mind apart. The pair challenged him so much.

“Because…they’re my memories. Because they’re you and me. Because…” She tipped her head backwards. “Because I hate not knowing. Leonid knew how to hunt me and I barely remembered he existed…and there is still so much we don’t know.”

He disliked watching her struggle. Something else lurked within her gaze, something… “Even if I never got a scrap of those memories back, if what I have right now is all I remember… I would be content.”

Eyes narrowing, she shifted in his lap until she straddled his legs once more and leaned into his chest so she could study him. “Really?” The element of doubt coupled with disbelief made him smile.

“Yes,” he told her, tugging the curl gently. “When I was in Bucharest, I got flashes of you—of vivid red hair against the snow. I could almost taste your scent, a lingering sweetness teasing the back of my tongue but I couldn’t quite identify it. Images of dancing…beautiful dancing.” He hadn’t shared that with Steve. “Sometimes when I laid down, I hoped sleep would come and it would bring one of those dreams. They were delicate, almost ephemeral and I could never hold on to much—except there was this glimpse of joy amidst blood and darkness.”

Leaning into those deep green eyes studying him, he committed them to memory. He did it every time he looked at her, tracing over the lines in her face, the bow of her upper lip, the faintest up tilt to her nose, and the gentle curving arch of her brow. That brow could convey so much, and he hungered for each code he deciphered. They’d risen at his declaration that he could survive without the memories, skeptical and questioning. Gradually they relaxed as he explained, and her eyes softened.

“I couldn’t remember what my Natalia looked like—but that name wound through me again and again. The only thing I ever knew for sure…you were the one thing I wanted, and they took you away. I couldn’t find you.” Bucky took a moment to swallow, but the Soldier didn’t flinch away from the gaze searching his. “I never stopped wanting to find you even when I didn’t know if you were real or what your name was. In Switzerland, Azzano, Venice, Prague, Budapest, Volgograd, Moscow, and Arkangelsk and here…you are who I want. I may not remember yesterday, but I’m here right now and I get to have tomorrow.”

He wouldn’t trade tomorrow for yesterday.

“Wow,” she said softly, and he chuckled.

“I lay my heart bare for you woman and you say _wow_?” But tension fisting in his gut loosened and he grinned.

She cupped his cheek with her palm. “I want tomorrow, too.” The admission demanded a great deal from Natalia. She’d been trained so fiercely to not want things. Wanting was dangerous for her. “But I want yesterday back…I want what they stole from us.”

And his shoulders drooped. Natalia’s fearlessness would push her. “I know,” he acquiesced.

“I won’t without telling you.” A definite concession on her part. “And I will wait for you to be here before I use it again—provided I can talk Tony into it.” Stark had been clearly opposed, simply changing the subject anytime it came up within his hearing. It seemed even he had learned that confrontation with Natalia did not always go the way you might want it, too. So he denied her the chance to convince him.

“I have faith in you.” Curling the lock of hair a little tighter, he beckoned her closer. The guys were going to be on clean up a while, and he could think of several ways to fill the time. “Come lay down with me? I’d like to hold you, and maybe you can get some sleep.”

The merest flicker of hesitation.

“I won’t sneak away once your eyes are closed,” he promised. “I will wake _you_ before I go.”

If he went, if they didn’t get to reschedule it entirely—yes he rather hoped they would give him the reprieve. Natalia would never ask them for it, no. She would shove them out the door, then bury her loneliness and need as her training demanded. They’d been excavating past it for days, and likely would for months and years to come.

He would do it. He would coax or push when she needed it from him. Natalia didn’t let him get away with anything and he would do the same for her. They had Steve to help build bridges while they handled the demolition on the roadblocks.

With the barest of nods, she murmured, “Fine. But I still don’t think I’m going to sleep.”

“You don’t have to,” he promised her, lifting her easily and carrying her toward her room. “Friday darken the windows to twenty percent, please.” The smart glass filled in as he crossed to her bed, muting out the sunshine and clearing the sense of exposure. An entire wall of windows no one could see through, Stark had assured him. He’d even given him a lift to a neighboring building at night so he could prove it. The windows illuminated, but there was zero visibility from his position. Though he remained leery of the resting when exposed, the dim function helped considerably.

He tugged back her blankets, the tangle of blanket and sheets revealing more of her restlessness from the night before. Tumbling her into the bed, he grinned at her laugh and followed as she scooted into the middle. She was so damn beautiful. The splay of her hair against the pillows lit something within.

_Natalia sprawled against the sheets having kicked them all away. A gleam of sweat shimmered on her skin even in the dusk of the room they shared. They had another few hours until true dark, then they would move on the compound she had spent a week negotiating out of various marks. The last had left a violent handprint around her throat, he’d studied the bruise intently before asking her of the mark’s status._

_A shrug had been his only answer. When he hadn’t been deterred from the question, she’d crawled onto his lap and kissed him. The first kiss turned into a second, and then a third, and then she had his body armor unbuckled and he had her dress off. Her clothing gave far swifter than his._

_He was not allowed to want, but with her—with his Widow—want was all the Soldier knew. Laving kisses over her flesh, he explored the soft curves of her breasts, nuzzling every mark as he found them. They littered a path across her soft skin, trespassers, every single one and he confronted them. Down the taut plane of her belly, he journeys pressing his hands to her hipbones when she arched and then easing her thighs apart with his shoulders._

_A soft, and sultry laugh teased him as she extended one leg to hook over his shoulder and that dangerous thigh pressed against his cheek. Turning his head, he mouthed a kiss against the tender flesh near the juncture where her thigh meets her body and her laugh turned into a gasp. The most deadly threat he had ever encountered and he would kneel for her every time. She could snap his neck in an instant, but the Soldier trusted his Widow and she has never betrayed him._

_Even as he nuzzled the skin, he tracked fresh fingerprints dug into her flesh. The little shadows of an invader who’d inflicted damage in his wake. He cataloged each and every one, for he would exact the price from the perpetrator before he ended them—then nuzzled a path between her slick labia, and stroking his tongue in slow circles around her clit. It had taken time, and trust, and effort—but he knew how to sunder her defenses and pull from her the most illicit reactions._

_Another lazy circle, and he glanced upward to find her gaze fixed on him and when he locked his lips around her clit and gave a hard suck, her mouth went wide, and she arched off the bed a soundless, wordless cry on her lips, A cry that was his alone because no other would ever hear what she did not cry as her back bowed._

_They inhabited these moments between breaths and they had their own language and as he teased another from her, the Soldier allowed the single traitorous thought—_ Mine— _to settle deep into his bones where no one would ever carve it out._

With a blink, he surged back to himself and his whole body vibrated as if a string strung too tight. Natalia rose on an elbow, concern glittering in her gaze. Even in the near dark, he had enough light from the sitting room spilling in the door to leave her every feature in soft relief. Not that he needed it, he’d memorized her face over and over.

The need to keep every expression, every nuance safe drove him every waking moment. Natalia had never been taught how to say what she felt, she’d never been allowed to feel, and yet those emotions lived like a wild maelstrom below the placid surface rising only in those rare moments when he plunged past the masks and the discipline to the only place they could show it. He had the words, he’d known what they were—or at least what they should be, and yet they’d never passed his lips. The Soldier wouldn’t allow it.

The words could cost her. The words wouldn’t keep her safe. So, he barricaded them deep. And even now, Bucky couldn’t unlock the door to let them out even as they pounded against his soul with every slam of his heart. He fell into her, catching his weight on his hands as they planted on either side of her on the bed, but he needn’t have bothered. She opened her arms and caught him. When his mouth crashed into hers, she opened with the same wordless cry she’d given him in that bed and he was gone, he damn near came in his pants and all he wanted to do was lick another soundless cry from her.

A chime intruded, but he had his fingers in her hair and he ignored it. Then her nails stroked down his back, the damn shirts were in the way. As tiny as she was compared to him, she was so strong. The corded muscle in her arms flexed as she wound her arms around his neck. Her thighs locked to his hips in a generous cradle and it took everything he had to not just rut into her like a schoolboy. Still, he crowded her and she was spread below him, sans weapons or escape, and she let herself be vulnerable. And a second chime split through the haze and he dragged his head up to glare.

“What?” The growl rumbled all the way up from his chest.

“I’m sorry to intrude Sergeant Barnes,” Friday genuinely sounded apologetic, and if she were an actual living being, he could almost imagine a blush staining her Irish cheeks. Not that he much cared at the moment. “Mr. Wilson has arrived to escort you to DC. Boss and Captain Rogers will meet you there.”

He scowled. “I hate him.” Wilson.

Dammit.

Natalia laughed, though there was an element of a throaty groan amidst the humor. “No you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.” He yearned for her, the flickering flames ignited by the memory did not want to bank. “We’ll just ignore him…”

He swooped in for another kiss, and she curved her legs, the flat of her foot resting against his ass and it sent a thrill racing up his spine. Natalia’s flexibility had always been a boon to her in battle and to him…the lust-fueled thoughts conjured another image, and he shuddered, angling into the kiss to and teasing her tongue with his.

It was in moments like this he wanted it back, all of it. Every stolen moment. Every earned kiss. Every desperately explored secret. He wanted her. Bucky. The Soldier. They just wanted her.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Friday said, an almost inaudible clearing of the throat. “Mr. Wilson insists that you need to prepare for this meeting to help reduce any chance for stress-induced challenges.” Yep. That computer was fucking laughing at him now, polite embarrassment aside.

Groaning, he buried his face into Natalia’s throat. “That’s not gonna fucking happen. Gimme a minute,” he whispered. “I’ll go shove him in a closet with a gag in his mouth and be right back.”

Natalia laughed again, the sound rich, husky, and purely decadent. “I’m pretty sure Steve won’t like that.”

“Don’t care,” he responded, mutinous. “He’s got Stark. You can share Clint. What does he need with Wilson?”

If it were possible, she laughed louder. With her coiled around him, he felt every beat of the sound in the way she tightened and flexed. Then she locked her thighs and he found himself on his back, with red crowned angel gazing down at him wearing the most devilish smile he’d ever seen. Damn, she was a picture.

“You have to go,” she reminded him.

The Soldier narrowed his eyes. “I have to be with you. Everything else is optional.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised, then stroked her hand along his cheek. When she glided her finger against his lips, he opened his mouth and scraped his teeth against the skin. “We have time…”

But she hadn’t been panicking, nor had he and fuck if he didn’t resent Wilson at the moment. Closing his eyes, he pressed his head back against the pillow. The briefest flash of ripping Falcon’s wing off on the hellicarrier skated across his mind’s eye. Extreme, maybe, But definitely satisfying.

“I hate him,” he repeated.

“I know,” she whispered, then pressed gentle kisses to his mouth, cheek, and finally his eyelids until he opened them and looked up at her. “I’ll be here when you get back…I want to know every detail, every nuance…” Without her there, he would be attending with a great big gaping hole at his side.

“I need you,” he admitted and a look of wonder slipped through her expression like a thief stealing through the night and it made his heart hurt. “I need you all the time.”

“I’ll be here,” she promised again.

His cell phone buzzed, the vibration somewhere near his thigh. With a scowl, he dug it out and held it up. A message on the screen from screen from Wilson.

_Stop hiding and get up here. We need to talk before._

Sam didn’t know Natalia was at the Tower. They’d limited the knowledge—for now. The fewer who knew, the fewer who could betray—and the four who did know would rather die than give her up.

“I hate him.”

“I know,” she soothed him, petting his chest. “For what it’s worth…I enjoyed the hell out of that display.”

“Good—I got a memory,” he teased her. “I’ll tell you all about it later—better, I’ll show you.” The widening of her eyes told him she understood the nature of the memory very well.

“Then we really did…”

“Oh yeah,” he said, with a slow grin. “Intimately, slowly, and with great deliberation.”

She rolled off and then planted a foot against his side and shoved. “Go. The faster you get this over with the faster you can get back.”

It was his turn to laugh, though his cock didn’t thank him for it. He tried to recall the Dodgers’ line up and stats from ’41, the spring before it all went to hell and the U.S. got dragged into the war they knew they should be involved in but no one wanted.

The last thing he planned to do was deal with Wilson commenting on his erection and that ass would—just to see if he could make Bucky squirm.

Drinking in the sight of her, he let out a little sigh. The floor was locked to the three of them and Stark only. No one else could get to her here. The thought gave him pause, yet the Soldier damn well knows she would have time to react, and she could more than take care of herself. She pointed her toes at him. “Don’t even think about it. DC first, return to the land of the living. Take back what belongs to you.”

That last line motivated him. They’d had so much taken away, and this was within his grasp. She wanted him to have it. So he would do it—even if it meant putting up with Wilson.

“Can I sleep in here with you tonight?” The question slipped out. “Even if you’re already asleep when I come back?” As much as he hoped she wouldn’t be, he also wouldn’t mind if she was asleep. Deeply. Resting. She hadn’t been.

“Yes,” she responded without hesitation. Then she patted the pillow. “Knife here.” Then she pointed at the nightstand. “Gun there.”

He knew, but he nodded. He didn’t think there would ever be a time he didn’t sleep with a weapon nearby, and Natalia never did either.

Dragging himself away, he raked a hand through his hair. “If you go out—keep the bracelet on?” It was a request, not a demand. A plea, not an order. A hope, not a fear.

“I will,” she murmured, rolling over to track his movements and he hesitated at the door. She was so beautiful, and soft, and right there… He’d get even with Wilson some day. Not sure when or how, but he would definitely do it. Didn’t matter if the guy didn’t know why. Bucky knew. “Be safe.”

The last was definitely an order, and the Soldier and the man both straightened at the command. “You, too.”

They snapped the mental picture, Natalia sprawled against the bed, her hair haloed against the dark sheets this time instead of the white. Side by side with the image from his memory—he compares, he adores, and he stores. He craved them all, every snap shot. Every moment.

With a pivot of his heel, he stalked toward the elevator. Friday had it open before he made it. “Resume privacy mode for Natalia, Friday,” he told her as the doors close. “And please take me to Wilson.”

“He is on the party deck, Sergeant. And I am sorry I had to interrupt, he and Boss were insistent that you cannot be late.”

“Yep,” he agreed popping the ‘p’ to keep from slugging the wall. Reclaiming his past wouldn’t mean a damn thing if he couldn’t secure his future. “Look after her, yeah?”

“With every defense system armed,” Friday promised. “No one will get into the Tower while you are all out.”

That was good.

“Thank you.”

Then the doors opened and Wilson smirked at him. “’bout time, Sleeping Beauty. You were military, being on time is the same as being late…”

He stalked past him and headed for the quinjet. “Then stop loitering, and get a move on.”

“Well, hello to you too,” Wilson muttered, but at least he did it while he was moving. His phone buzzed, and he checked the screen.

_I’ll be here._

The reminder helped, and he swiped away the message before Wilson could see it.

It helped a lot.


	3. Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the mission, Steve just wants to go back to the Tower, but instead he has to head straight to DC for a long evening of trying to convince the military to back Bucky's pardon.

**Chapter Three**

**Shield**

**Steve**

 

 

Clearing the oil derrick had taken significant effort. The group they’d had to dislodge had dug in deep, planting themselves throughout the structure. That and explosives. As he unbuckled his suit, he glanced down at the smudged to near black all over the blue. He might as well be in his stealth suit from the STRIKE team.

“We’ve got about forty-five minutes, Cap.” Tony called. “We’ll be cutting it close, but we should make it. Wilson and Rhodey picked up Barnes at the Tower, and they are already en route.”

“Good—thanks Tony.”

“No problem,” the billionaire said airily. He leaned back in the pilot’s seat, looking nearly as clean as he had when they’d left the Tower in the first place. The armor on the other hand looked as battered and filthy as Steve felt.

Stripped down to his skivvies, he made use of the sink for a sketchy sponge bath, mostly he concentrated on scrubbing his face. The hint oil in the smoke seemed to have stained his skin.

Hopefully it hadn’t stained his beard.

Tony appeared in his periphery and passed him a small bottle of bluish liquid. “Soap’s not gonna get that off. This stuff should.”

Pouring a quarter size amount into his palm he began to scrub the thick dark stains off his skin. “What is it?” It didn’t smell bad, and it had a little grainy effect.

“Would you believe sugar and dish soap?” Tony chuckled. “Easy to lay hands on, and better for cutting through grease without taking a layer of skin off. Should work on the beard, too.”

“Thanks,” he said, switching his attention to his face after his hands washed almost clear.

“Yep, need you looking spiffy to impress all the brass at the meeting.”

The brass. Steve didn’t sigh, at least not aloud. He’d never enjoyed these types of events, but he’d glad hand every soldier assigned to the Pentagon if it got Bucky his pardon, and his life back. It was the only reason, he was pushing to get the wash up done, and into a clean uniform.

Tony was on the horn, talking about Roxxon to someone. Worried about what research they’d been doing because there had been a lab on the oil derrick. Steve hadn’t gotten a good look inside before a fire broke out when one of the terrorists tried to hit him with a flash bang. It ignited the vapor and the subsequent explosion killed two of theirs, and tossed Steve right into a reinforced steel door. That had left a mark, but it’d heal. Face washed, clean uniform and his hands mostly clean, he returned to his gear and pulled out his phone.

Leaving first thing after Natasha had been out all night had not been how he wanted to deal with the issue. They’d had a lot of mission call outs this week, some small, some large. Tony was testing an algorithm that used available data on an incident to estimate loss of life without their involvement versus their involvement—and so far they were three for three without loss of civilian life and minimizing property damage. The derrick might not count, but they’d avoided a well fire or an oil spill. That had to count as a win. He and Tony were even working well together, and Vision had fallen right into sync. But it wasn’t the same—Natasha should be at his side, and every time he glanced for her in the fight—she wasn’t there.

She’d taken down Ross. How she had done it worried the hell out of him. It began when a lawyer interrupted his meeting with the committee insisting they needed to see and listen to the recordings he had. Tony had been intrigued as the man fast-talked and it wasn’t until later, he learned the man was Matt Murdock’s friend and a partner in their legal firm.

The recording included video, though it was long distance and required a zoom lens. The camera detailed a house in Georgetown, the Secret Service detail, then narrowed through a rear window into a kitchen.

Nat.

His whole body had gone cold, she was sitting at a table in Ross’ kitchen and she spoke in a robotic almost monotone voice. It had to have been one of the worst moments in his life. Next to him, Tony had jolted. They had to listen and watch everything that happened at the house—including Ross striking her and burning her hand. She never reacted. A part of him was convinced she was playing him, but the longer it went on—the greater his unease. Ross brought up Nat’s assignment to seduce Tony Stark, then he wanted to know if she could take out Tony’s suits—when she mentioned specific numbers—Tony snorted and the corner of his mouth turned up in a familiar smirk. Not only was the council reviewing the recordings, but they were also studying he and Tony.

He didn’t have to pretend to not know what was going on because Natasha had deliberately left them in the dark other than she had a plan and it required her form of interrogation. Then she'd gone to Matt Murdock for assistance rather than any of them, and yes, that knowledge stung.

She’d done it. Ross confessed a great deal through his questions, and revealed his character in the questionable acts while tying him to Smith—whom he called Fenhoff. It went on and on, then came the orders—Ross actually ordered her to assassinate Steve, and Tony and stated the council members were acceptable collateral. The entire room had gone up in a shout of outrage.

When Friday let them know she was at the Tower, he and Tony hadn’t been able to leave fast enough even as the council unanimously voted to grant his pardon, as well as the others. They were the Avengers again and Ross was out—and likely under arrest.

That had been barely a week ago and mere days after watching her fight for her mind at the facility in Arkangelsk, and then he had to watch Ross torture her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t react. Her face had been bruised, and he swore that she'd likely cracked her cheekbone again. On top of that, her hand had been scalded with second degree burns. It healed over the last few days…but it had happened and Steve hated the helpless feeling he experienced.

Now, they were done and he was glad of it, but he just wanted to call Natasha and tell her everything was all right, and he’d be back as soon as they finished speaking to the Department of Defense. Flipping the phone over, there was a message from her on the screen.

_Be safe._

It had been sent in direct response to his message when she’d been in the shower. Dammit. The disappearing acts, the not sleeping, and the withdrawing—he had no idea what he’d done wrong or what was tearing her up because she wouldn’t talk to him. The fact she’d come back at all had been monumental, and he thought they were past this but since they’d moved into the Tower, it had only gotten worse.

It was why he wanted to get them out of it. In a place they could call their own, all three of them. Nat didn’t need to see the constant missions or live in the middle of the city where anyone might recognize her. Hell, it had been hard enough to keep it from Sam, but he and Bucky had discussed it with Tony and Clint had thrown in his two cents. Not even Laura and the kids knew Nat was back or at the Tower.

He sent a text to Nat. _Awake?_

_Yep. Did good on the coast._

_Thanks._ He sighed. _Heading to DC_

_Tony said._

Tony? He twisted to glance up at the pilot’s seat, but Tony wasn’t on the phone anymore—instead he was studying something on a StarkPad.

_Coming straight back after._

There was silence, he should have just called her—but he didn’t want to have the conversation where Tony could listen. Some things he preferred to keep private.

_I’ll be here…_

_…sorry about this morning. I was a bitch._

_No._ He fired that off. _You weren’t._

_…_

_…_

The little dots showed her typing something, but the message didn’t come through, until finally:

_I was, but I don’t want to argue. Take care of you. Take care of James. I’ll be here._

Then she followed it up with a series of goofy emojis and he had to laugh. Hot and cold. Her moods seemed to follow a pendulum from mercurial to mischievous. He knew it was hard for her to be there, but not be a part of the team. He got that, but…

But nothing.

Natasha had given up so much for them—for him. What he needed to do was find a way to be there for her if she’d let him.

_We will see you soon._

Hopefully with Bucky’s freedom in hand…

“You good, Cap?” Tony had turned the chair and studied him.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Just tired.” Which was true. He hadn’t slept the night before, not since realizing Natasha had slipped out and they had no idea where she was. Watching the tracking footage Friday found of Natasha running in the park—her face had been an absolute blank. It had taken Bucky thirty minutes to talk him out of going after her right then. But it hadn’t stopped him from wanting to and he hadn’t been able to stay inside when Friday alerted him to the fact she’d had to bypass the main entrance.

In retrospect, that may have been a mistake. She’d looked weary to the bone until she spotted him and then her hackles were up. The normal tease in her voice had a lot more bite to it and he didn’t want to fight with her. He’d wanted to scoop her up and hold her tight, never let her go.

“You get a chance to read those profiles Friday put together on who we’re meeting?” Tony’s right knee bounced a little, even though the rest of him appeared calm.

“I did. Twice. I know we need to make a good impression.”

“That part won’t be hard for you Cap, as uncomfortable as these situations make you—you practically exude patriotism. They’re going to fawn, and they’re going to want to kiss your ass, but…and I say this with at least a moderate amount of respect for you…don’t believe a word that comes out of their mouths. Let them do the talking. Focus on Barnes, and his contributions during the war. We want to keep that front and center.”

He nodded.

“And for gosh sakes, watch your language.” The corner of Tony’s mouth quirked up and Steve chuckled.

“Better,” the billionaire hummed under his breath and swung the chair around. “Buckle up, we’re landing in five.”

“Hey Tony?” Since they didn’t actually need to buckle up, he made his way to the front so he could see the sprawl of DC in the distance. It felt like decades since he’d been back here.

“Yep?”

“Did you call Natasha about Roxxon?”

“Yeah,” Tony answered without pause, and threw a glance at him. “Something about the lab, the explosion, and the location—it felt a little hinky. There were rumors in the past about Roxxon experimenting with some really not so nice stuff. Asked Natasha if she could take a look for us.”

If anyone could ferret out a secret, it would be her. But she was supposed to be laying low and recovering…even if physically she seemed healed up, he didn’t think the rest of her was. Not yet.

“Tasha needs something to do, Cap,” the other man said quietly. “She knows intelligence better than any of us…Clint said something a few days back that stuck with me…”

The Pentagon was visible and there was a delegation waiting for them at the landing area marked out in one of the secure parking lots.

“…we were talking about Zemo and the Accords. Zemo played us because he had our number, but between the Accords and the tension between you and me and Natasha being at the center of it in Geneva when that bomb went off—she didn’t see what he was doing. And normally she would have. She’d have been the first one of us looking at it sideways…” He shook his head. “I can’t help but wonder if that was his plan all along. He had to know she’d be there, despite the secret spy stuff she really is our most diplomatic asset. Taking out Natasha, making you think Barnes did it…or convincing me he was responsible. That would have sent us down that rabbit hole a lot faster.”

His stomach sank. “But he didn’t kill her…”

“Nope, just created a whole lot more noise and then you and I are on a collision course taking everyone down with us and who had time to even notice a puppet master?” The self-recrimination in Tony’s voice echoed the one in Steve’s mind. “So yeah, I asked her to take a look. She’ll see stuff we won’t. Now game faces on…let’s go grease the wheels…”

Bucky waited away from the uniforms with wheelchair-bound Rhodey on one side and Sam on the other. Fortunately, though there was an escort, they didn’t have armed guards on him. While he remained expressionless, Bucky’s shoulders seemed to visibly relax when Steve walked down the ramp with his shield on his back, because the image would help sell the generals, and those were the men they needed to convince. They were halfway there on their own.

Three hours later, after making several rounds of a reception room, enduring a battery of questions that kept swinging the focus back to the destruction of the hellicarriers and the subsequent fall of SHIELD, Steve was ready to throw the towel in and just go back on the run.

Bucky had made the rounds with him, shoulder to shoulder. Where he used to possess the easy charm and quick wit to entertain an audience, he’d grown more and more subdued with each passing hour. More than once, Steve had stepped right into the questions when they focused too much on the negative and told a story about pre-war Brooklyn or the food they’d had to make due with on the front, anecdotes that could appeal to the soldiers in the men around him.

It worked to gentle the suspicion in their eyes and remind them that enhanced or not, he and Bucky were soldiers. They’d served their country, and Steve still did. Then the inevitable question of whether Bucky would join the Avengers came up and no matter how they tried to redirect (thanks to Rhodey), deflect (thanks to Tony), or simply disengage (thanks to Sam), everyone they spoke to seemed to side step them right into the mine field.

For the most part, it went well, until General Glenn Talbot looked Bucky right in the eye and said, “If we have to have a pseudo-Russian on the team, better you than Romanoff.”

The temperature around them dropped several degrees.

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s a skilled interrogator and a hell of a spy, but between her sketchy history and SHIELD, she should never have been an Avenger in the first place. That’s a black eye we’re not going to shake off anytime soon.” The general tossed back a drink as if unaware of the very thin ice he’d slipped on. Despite the jovial manner, there was a cunning, almost cutting light in his eyes. “Though—she turned traitor for the pair of you. The optics on that aren’t pretty—rogue agent bails out a former Hydra asset and Captain America.”

The general turned all that focus onto Steve, and it was just like being in a back alley in Brooklyn all over again. Only this time, instead of a big guy crowding him into a corner and pounding on his face until Steve couldn’t see, Steve was taller than this general, and probably had a good thirty pounds of muscle more than him.

“Optics aren’t the first concern in the field,” Steve said lightly, but he didn’t look away from Talbot. If the guy wanted to keep talking about Natasha there was going to be a whole other issue.

“Maybe,” Talbot said with a shrug. “And maybe the hooks of Hydra go a lot deeper than even you realize Captain. You start throwing mind control out there and the fact SHIELD kept you locked up as they defrosted you—who’s to say they didn’t get to you then?”

“Good evening, General.” Rhodey made his way over, the wheelchair forced all of them to take a step back to include him. “I apologize for the interruption, but Tony is about to explain the new program the Avengers are using to help identify where we’re really needed. He said you’d been asking about it.”

Talbot grimaced, then with another hard, almost warning look at he and Bucky, he said, “Captain Rogers. Sergeant Barnes.” Then he moved away, and Steve let out a slow breath.

“Thanks Rhodey.” Steve folded his arms, despite the uniform and the shield, he never felt so exposed. While he didn’t want to keep glancing at Bucky and making him think he was worried about him, he couldn’t help but worry.

“I don’t like that guy,” Bucky said, some of the first words he’d uttered in over an hour.

Steve couldn’t really disagree with him.

“Talbot’s not so bad,” Rhodey said, pitching his voice low. The last thing they needed was to create a scene. “He’s a hard ass, and a stickler for the rules. After the whole DC incident, he was put in charge of the Hydra mop up. You guys were doing the hunt for the scepter, and other artifacts, but he had to go after the rest including the remaining Hydra operatives and it was damn hard to tell friend from foe.”

The information didn’t excuse his attitude.

“And to be fair, he’s probably trying to see if either of you know where Natasha is. It'd be a feather in his cap if he were the one to catch her.” The comment surprised Steve. Rhodey didn’t know. They hadn’t told him, and they weren’t going to. Better not to compromise anyone else, and safer for Natasha if no one knew she was back. When they cleared her, then they could stage a public return. 

Rhodey looked from Steve to Bucky then back again, “Look, Cap—I know she’s a friend, she was a friend of ours too—well at least I thought she was. Point is, there are a lot of people in the intelligence community and in the military that would very much like her to go away. So we need to keep you two clean, especially him, so that the rest of them forget that association.” He nodded to Bucky.

The well-meaning advice rubbed Steve the wrong way. Nat would just shrug it all off, so Steve gave it a one-shouldered shrug and didn’t answer. _Don’t want to talk about something? Don’t. Don’t make anything up, just move on. Most people allow the change of subject because politeness has conditioned them to avoid confrontation in social settings._ She’d been so matter of fact about it.

As if reading from the same playbook, Bucky snorted. “How much longer does this thing have to go on?”

Forever seemed the most likely answer. “I got no idea,” Steve muttered, then glanced around the room. They’d talked to most of the people present. There was a long table with sandwiches, snacks, and drinks. The informal formality offered them food, but not a lot of comfortable seating arrangements with a scattering of smaller tables around the room and no chairs.

“Could go another couple of hours,” Rhodey said, glancing around the room. “The president might still be showing up, and there’s a lot of questions they want to ask but haven’t yet. For what it’s worth, you’re doing great.”

The lack of nervous energy around Bucky wasn’t necessarily a positive. He kept going still, watchful and wary. This was a crowded room with a lot of unknowns. If it made Steve uncomfortable, it had to be making Buck crazy.

“You think there’s somewhere Bucky and I can just step out and get some air?” The Pentagon was a secured location, part of the reason the meet and greet was here. They could control public access and minimize if not altogether remove any press.

Rhodey studied him, then Bucky and nodded. “I think we can make that happen.” In his dress blues, Rhodey still cut a commanding figure despite his status in the wheelchair. Tony had developed prosthetic braces that would allow Rhodey to walk, but it was a work in progress. “Airman,” he called to one of the men standing at the door. The airman made his way over immediately. “Please escort Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes to the courtyard. They need some air. Make sure they aren’t bothered and then escort them back when they’re ready.”

“Yes, sir.” The airman glanced at them, professional and polished. “Sirs, if you’ll follow me.”

The airman didn’t have to ask them twice, they fell into step with Steve urging Bucky ahead of him so he could follow a half-step behind. Bucky had frowned, then nodded. Steve at his back would be far easier for him to accept when they were both wound tight.

No one seemed to notice their exodus, thankfully and the airman didn’t ask them any questions as he lead them through the secured halls, and finally out into stone garden area marked by some plants, a couple of awnings, and a few tables and chairs scattered about. The cold air was a rush against his skin, and Steve let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since he left the Tower that morning.

“I’ll be here,” the airman nodded to the crosswalk leading toward one corner. “Please take all the time you need, Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes.” If this kid had a flicker of judgment in him regarding the situation, he didn’t show it.

Bucky stalked ahead, scanning the area before he chose a spot under an awning with his back to the stone wall. He stripped off the sports coat he’d thrown over his t-shirt and jeans, then dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket after he tossed the coat onto the back of a chair. His metal arm gleamed under the yellow floodlights. Cigarette lit, Bucky slumped.

“You’re doing great, Buck.”

“You’re tenser than a pitcher in the last inning of the series with too many on base and the score tied up.” Oddly specific, but at least Bucky cracked a smile. “Take it easy Punk, you’re not the one they are torn about whether to throw in jail or pin a medal on. Maybe both.”

The tip of his cigarette flared and the scent of burning tobacco offered a strange kind of comfort. Bucky sitting out on the fire escape, smoking because it triggered Steve’s asthma inside—getting annoyed at him when Steve would follow anyway. It didn’t do anything to him now, and probably didn’t do much for Bucky. Sometimes habits were just comfortable—like beating a speed bag until he burst the seams.

“Never liked these things,” Steve admitted. “You were always better at it.”

With a snorting chuckle, Bucky shook his head. “Not anymore.” Though he leaned against the wall, taking the occasional drag off his smoke, Bucky’s eyes never relaxed. He seemed constantly on alert…and had for the last several hours. It had to be wearing on him.

“Maybe we let Tony know we need to wrap this up.” While deeply grateful for everything Tony had done, pushing Bucky too long might not work out for any of them. And he really wanted to get back.

“I’ll be fine, pal,” Bucky assured him. “Just give me a few more minutes out here with cold air, far fewer uniforms and less demands. Then I’ll put the jacket back on and go perform.”

The comment threw Steve back to sitting out in back of dance halls, leaning against a wall, and trying to get his stage fright under control. He’d had more the occasional girl, usually one visiting the show rather than working, who offered to help him relax and as tempting as it might have been, he never accepted. They were there for the war effort, not to punch notches in his non-existent belt. Still, he’d hated every minute on the stage with people staring at him as he slugged Adolf Hitler and asked them to buy bonds to support their best guys in the war effort.

“This is a bit of a dog and pony show, isn’t it?” He knew, he guessed, but he hadn’t really _recognized_ it until they were in there.

“Yeah, feels like they’re all staring at me, waiting for me to snap.” The corners of Bucky’s mouth turned down in derision. “I’m betting some of them are hoping I will.”

“Too bad they’ll have to live with disappointment.” He wanted to ask him about Natasha, but they couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be ears here so they had to play it quiet. But the thought brought him back around to… “What did you think of Talbot?”

“He’s an asshole.” Not an ounce of hesitation as he lit a new cigarette of the remains of the old before snuffing it out. “Guy’s got an axe to grind.”

Yeah, Steve had noticed that, too. But was it a personal axe? Or just related to SHIELD? The fall of the organization had to happen, they had to take it down, but no matter what they did—it kept coming back to bite them in the ass.

“I like General Gabriel,” Steve said. “He kind of reminded me of Coulson.” Though the men were nothing alike physically, there was an earnestness to the general reminiscent of the deceased SHIELD agent.

“Yeah, I’m surprised he hasn’t asked for your autograph yet.” The flash of a smile eased the lines of tension on Bucky’s face.

“There’s still time,” Steve sighed. He leaned on the wall next to Bucky, and they both stared across the courtyard. The airman had turned his back to them to offer a modicum of privacy and neither Steve nor Bucky were speaking loud enough to be overheard.

“Yeah.” Just like that, Bucky’s mood deflated. “Seems like.” The air was heavy with all the words they weren’t saying.

Catching his eye, Steve raised his brows—how was he doing really? Bucky shrugged with a small shake of his head—not great, but he’d survive.

“Really? We go to all this trouble and you two are hanging out here like a pair of greasers?” Tony strode across the walk to join them. He clapped the airman on the shoulder and murmured something to him. The younger man nodded, then moved farther away.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Bucky retorted.

Tony clutched his chest. “You got that reference?”

“They had greasers in the forties,” Steve told him drily. “So yes, we got that reference.”

“Well,” Tony murmured, and clapped his hands together as he paused. “How about that?”

A smile twisted Steve’s mouth upward in spite of his mood. “Yeah, how about that…flying monkeys and greasers. I get all the references.”

Tony actually chortled, as he shook his head. “You’re not doing so bad. Either of you. It’s actually going well, really well. But you know the part that’s not going so well?”

“No,” Bucky drawled. “But I wager you’re about to tell us.”

“You really were the brains of the operation, weren’t you?” The flinty little barbs were so Tony that Steve had to fight a laugh when Bucky bristled. “But yes, I’m going to tell you—the two of you ditching out is not helping. You need to be in there, making that good impression, selling them on good old fashioned American values and apple pie.”

“Well my pie making skills have gone by the wayside,” Bucky said with a smirk. “And I doubt those stuffed shirts would much care for my values. The bullies in that room would all be sporting bloody noses for example.”

“Yeah,” Tony said squinting at him. “Not what I had in mind.”

“Didn’t think so.” Bucky held up the remains of his second cigarette to light a third. “So, we took a break. We’ll be back.”

“Just needed some air, Tony.” Steve sighed. “But I can head back if you think that’s best, but hang out with Bucky would ya?” He wasn’t keen on leaving him alone on the off chance anyone pulled anything. While he didn’t used to be so skeptical of others’ intentions, he found himself questioning them all the time now.

What had Natasha said? _Everyone has an agenda, Cap. Even you. The best you can do is to work out whether their agenda conflicts with yours. Those are the ones you have to watch._

He wasn’t sure about any of the agendas in that room. They seemed sincere, and they seemed to be going out of their way—yet they still had to _sell_ them on the idea.

“Just hang out for a few more minutes,” Tony said, waving him back to the wall. “I slipped out and said we had some Avengers business to handle. Quick follow up to the mission this morning.” There was a small device inside his pocket that he checked, the blue light gleamed in the darkness and then he closed it again.

“How’d that go, anyway?” Bucky glanced from one to the other. “Watched it some on the news and Friday gave a sitrep.”

Tony smirked. “And someone gave me the bird.”

Bucky shrugged.

“It was a mess, but nothing we couldn’t handle,” Steve answered. In fact, the only reason it took them so long is it was just the three of them and they couldn’t risk the heavier firepower around so much flammable material. “Still not entirely sure what the goal was, but we’ll figure it out.”

There had been no demands, but maybe the terrorists hadn’t had time to make them. The call out came in less than ninety minutes after they’d taken the place. The skeleton crew proved little resistance, except one of them got a call off.

“Already working on it,” Tony reminded him. “But that’s what I want to talk to you both about, too. One of the reasons they’re pushing so hard is they see the Avengers as understaffed still.”

“To be fair, we kind of are.” Steve didn’t like it anymore than Tony did. “Sam just got here. Clint and Rhodey are still recovering. Scott only wants to be involved part time if we really need him. Wanda’s not quite ready to come back.” If she ever would be. She’d been hesitant in the one conversation Steve had with her. “T’Challa’s never going to be able to go full time.” And they couldn’t have Nat. Not yet.

“You make their point for them. We need more able bodies, and you Barnes, have an able body.” Tony folded his arms. “We make this work right, and we get you back into training, do some rounds with the team and we can start filling in the gaps.”

Bucky just shrugged. “We’ll see.” But Steve understood the reticence. He’d been fighting for decades, if he didn’t want to anymore—Steve wouldn’t make him. That added another check to the column of getting Bucky and Nat out of the Tower. The security was great, but it put them both right in the thick of it.

“I like that can do attitude there…” With a roll of his eyes, Tony sent Steve a look that all but cried out _talk to him._ Steve gave him a small shake of the head. Not here. Not now.

“What about that spider punk?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah,” Tony said elongating the syllable. “No. He’s not ready for that.”

That surprised Steve, just based on how the kid had handled himself and Tony’s conversation in Vienna. “Maybe we can work with him like…” He hesitated, because he was about to say _like Nat and I did with the last team_. Rhodey, Sam, Vision, Wanda were not ready to work together when they started, and it had taken he and Nat a while to help them find a rhythm. Nat had been invaluable in that, she’d always seen the weak spots even if Steve hadn’t always listened.

“Maybe, but the kid can’t sign the Accords, so the kid won’t be joining the team.” There was a very definitive period at the end of that sentence.

“Okay,” Steve said with a nod. Tony didn’t want to expose the kid’s identity and Steve actually didn’t have a problem with it. “Then we figure it out as we go. We’ll find a rhythm.”

“Just like that?” Was Tony surprised he wasn’t pressing about the kid or by the fact he wasn’t going to press at all?

“Yep. Just like that. I told you—I believe in people. I believe in this team. We’ll find a way.”

For a moment, Tony and Bucky wore twin expressions as they stared at him.

“What?”

“Has he _always_ been like this?” Tony swung to Bucky and eyed him.

“Yep,” Bucky said, shaking his head despite the hint of a smile he wore.

“Like what?” He eyed the pair, not at all comfortable with the idea of Tony and Bucky teaming up to give him hell. Individually, they could poke holes in him all day. Together, he probably wouldn’t be left with a leg to stand on. God help him if Natasha piled on.

Tony spread his hands as though he was trying to describe the concept. “You’re just so… _you_!”

With a tired sigh, Steve settled for a patient expression. “Do I want to know what that means?”

“I know what it means, Punk,” Bucky told him and slung an arm over his shoulder. “And he’s right…you’re just you.”

Steve gave him a shove. “Get off. You never wanted to follow Captain America.”

“Still don’t,” Bucky said with a smirk. “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight? Him I’ll follow.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

Tony laughed, and shook his head. “And then you go and get real again.” He rubbed at his goatee as he studied him. “You know…that actually might be the way to go.”

“What is?” Not for the first time, he and Bucky were in total lockstep in that echoed response.

“First of all…that’s creepy,” Tony chided, pointing a finger from one to the other. “Second of all, reminding people why Bucky Barnes has been your best friends from school yard to battlefield.”

“Oh God,” Bucky groaned and turned away. “Anything but that exhibit.” He crushed out a cigarette.

“It’s not so bad,” Steve tried to defend. “Humiliating. Invasive. Wrong in places…”

“In places?” Bucky gaped at him.

“They smoothed over the rough edges. I don’t think they were looking for truth…”

_Natasha laughed at him as she walked through the exhibit. He hadn’t even realized she was there until she settled on the bench beside him in the video room. Peggy was talking on the film, and he’d just wanted to soak up the sound of her voice and see her as close to how she’d been._

_“Hey Cap,” Natasha murmured as she bumped his shoulder. That was it, just hey. Then she focused and listened. He slipped the compass in his hand back into his pocket, and afterward they’d wandered through the whole of the exhibit. She had to stop and read every placard, study every photo, but it was when they got to the showgirls that she started laughing._

_“Yeah, yuck it up. I was raising money for war bonds.” He rubbed the back of his neck._

_“I’m not laughing at you Steve…” She almost crooned at him as she hooked an arm through his and pointed at the photo she’d been eyeing. “I’m laughing at all those broken hearts you left behind.”_

_What? What was she talking about?_

_“Oh come on, please tell me you weren’t that oblivious.”_

_“To what?” To add to his discomfort, now he was really embarrassed because it came out harsher than he intended. “Sorry…I just don’t get the joke.”_

_She stepped right up behind him, slipping her hand to the back of his neck and nudging him to look at the photo again. “Look at their eyes, Cap,” she murmured. “Look at how they are all staring at you. Those smiles? Those are real smiles. You can see it in their eyes as they stare at you.”_

_He frowned, then squinted a little as he leaned closer. He didn’t really need it, his visual acuity was just fine from where he was, but when he looked at these photos—all he saw was the dumb kid from Brooklyn in a silly outfit trying to play whatever part they’d let him have._

_To his surprise—and really knowing Natasha as he did, he really shouldn’t be—she was right. The girls were all staring at him. “It wasn’t like that,” he murmured. “The blonde there on the end, her name was Jenny. Her fiancé shipped out in the first wave of recruitment right after Pearl Harbor. Marla, she’s the dark haired girl right next to me—she’d already lost two brothers and had two more at home. She was doing this cause she didn’t want the younger brothers to go.”_

_One by one he told her their stories of wives, sisters, _fiancées_ and girlfriends. Nat leaned into his side and he’d tucked an arm around her. He didn’t want to share those personal anecdotes with just anyone walking by. When he finished he said, “So I’m not breaking their hearts,” he told her. “Promise.”_

_When he glanced down at her, she’d been wearing the most enigmatic smile then she just shook her head and muttered something Russian under her breath. The rest of the day at the exhibit went the same, he’d tell her the real version not the one prettied up for display and by the time they’d left, he’d felt better than he had in months…_

He came back to himself abruptly and shook his head. “…anyway. They just want to gloss over the rough stuff.”

“So don’t—go back in there and just be yourselves. Be best friends and then we can grab some real food like a cheeseburger or something when we get out of here cause the finger sandwiches are not working—”

“Tony!” Rhodey’s voice cut through the darkness.

Tony made a face, but his grin didn’t flag as he murmured, “Busted!” Then he fiddled with something inside his jacket before he wheeled around. “Honeybear! We were just talking about you…”

“You’re supposed to be talking to the brass, not hiding out here like you’re about to slip out the back of some night club. This is the _Pentagon_.” Rhodes stressed the last four words.

Sauntering over to him, Tony slid his hands into his pockets. “Really? Is that what they call this? I just thought it was drunk construction…”

Bucky snorted, then laughed as he grabbed his jacket. With a nod, he motioned for them to follow. Admittedly, while Steve wasn’t looking forward to going back inside, he had relaxed and Bucky seemed more at ease.

They caught up just in time to hear Tony scandalize Rhodey again, and Bucky laughed aloud. It was a great sound, warm and filled with mirth. It also pulled attention from the generals and other staff in the room as they re-entered, and maybe—just maybe—softened some of the judgment in their eyes.

Steve grinned slowly, and genuinely for the first time since he’d arrived.

This just might work the way they wanted it to after all.

 


	4. Mechanic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony works his magic at the Pentagon before he, Steve, and Barnes finally get to leave and head home.

**Chapter Four**

**Mechanic**

**Tony**

 

 

A couple of hours turned into four. The arrival of the Secretary of Defense followed swiftly by President Ellis kept all of them at the Pentagon deep into the night. Fortunately, the Secretary of Defense appeared to be Ross’ polar opposite. Secretary Manelli was a charismatic and engaging fellow who seemed genuinely interested in both Rogers and Barnes. The three had been talking for the better part of forty-five minutes—and thank God, they’d both relaxed.

“Well that seems to be going well,” Ellis said as he joined Tony. For a man with a detail of six Secret Service agents, he moved pretty quietly. That or Tony was just damn tired. As used to running low on sleep as he was, he was pushing the boundaries of his limits.

“Normally I’d quip something about appearances and all that, but with Rogers what you see is mostly what you get so yeah—I’d say it’s going well.” Turning with a glass of water in one hand, Tony accepted the president’s firm, but equally quick handshake. “Thank you for coming tonight, sir. I know you certainly didn’t have to.” And based on the time, he’d thought Ellis had graciously, if silently declined.

“To be fair,” Ellis told him, sliding his hands into his pockets as they stood side by side studying the various military and political personnel now in the room. The attendance had been carefully vetted, and secured. No leaks would be tolerated and if they pulled it off, a minor miracle. “I considered not. What happened to Sergeant Barnes is inexcusable, but we can’t overlook that for the better part of a century, he’s been behind some of the most brutal and world changing assassinations and events.”

The rumors about his involvement in the JFK assassination would be enough to give any sitting president pause.

“I get that,” Tony drew out the words. “I do. Admittedly, I felt the same way.” Not a lie, and the bald, blunt truth earned him the full weight of Ellis’ attention.

“Then why the hell are we here, Mr. Stark?”

Shifting his weight, Tony pivoted so they were eye-to-eye. “I’m here because while yes, the Winter Soldier was tasked by a nefarious, malicious, and quite simply evil organization to target and assassinate well known figures and key power players—including _my parents_ …” He stressed the last two words and let them sit there a moment. It was always a good idea to make sure the information had warmed to the right temperature before you flipped it to sear the point home. “Sergeant Barnes did not.”

“You believe that?” Ellis studied him, his expression a mask of perfect political neutrality—everyone’s friend and no one’s ally.

“I have to,” Tony admitted. “I have to because Dad liked Sergeant Barnes and while he could be an ass, he was a decent judge of character. I have to because Captain Rogers thinks the world of Sergeant Barnes and while I think Cap’s hopelessly and hilariously idealistic, we need more of that kind of thinking, not less. I have to because someone I admire and respect understands the nature of what happened to Sergeant Barnes on a level none us would ever want to experience—and they are neither foolish nor idealistic, but pragmatic to the core. Sergeant Barnes was a prisoner of war. The Winter Soldier was as much his cell as the cryo chambers they kept him in.”

Finished, Tony took a drink of the water to cover the faint tremor in his hand and the rapid race of his heart. While he meant every single word, there was a part of him that went raw in defending anything about the Winter Soldier. Even separating the two in his mind, which he had successfully accomplished, did not ease the distress. Letting Ellis ponder, Tony glanced around the room—idly bored. It was a perfect image he’d spent a lot of years cultivating.

By happenstance, he collided gazes with Rogers and then Barnes, both of whom stared at him a beat longer than necessary. Barnes’ face was unreadable, but he wrenched his attention back to the secretary. Steve didn’t look away, but he did nod and there was a quiet gratitude in his eyes.

It was Tony who shifted his focus elsewhere. He didn’t want Rogers’ gratitude or Barnes’ for that matter. He wasn’t doing it for them personally. It was what he told himself over and over—he did it because it was the right thing to do. He did it because he meant what he said that the loss of seventy years of self-expression and determination among other things was punishment enough.

“Hell, Stark,” Ellis exhaled a long breath, then rubbed at his jaw. “If it was anyone else asking, I’d wonder about their angle—but you really get nothing out of this.”

“Except the right to sleep peacefully,” he kept his voice neutral, but warm. He didn’t tack on words like eventually or if he ever managed to sleep restfully again. If he discounted the moments he’d experienced over the last three weeks, he could argue he hadn’t slept peacefully since 1991. Not really.

Maybe this would do it. His parents could rest. Barnes could rest. Tony could rest.

Well, if not rest, at least look Natasha in the eye and say he did everything he could. After what he’d seen with his own eyes, he didn’t doubt Barnes had been a victim every bit as much as she had been. They were both fighting to reclaim themselves—Natasha had been in the fight for a hell of a lot longer and she still suffered. So yeah, they needed all the help they could get.

“Look I can’t promise anything,” Ellis tells him unnecessarily.

“Shocking, Mr. President. Shocking that a political figure can’t talk in absolutes.” The dryness of his tone robbed it of any sting. “I don’t need promises—what I want are assurances that you will do everything within reason to make this happen, not for me, and not for you or any political capital you might gain, or quite possibly lose even if you are successful. I want you to do this because it’s the _right_ thing to do.”

The man stared at him a long moment, but it was the president who looked away. He wore an uncomfortable expression as he studied the table with the Secretary of Defense, Rogers, and Barnes. The secretary was laughing at something Barnes recounted to him, and Barnes seemed the most animated he had since Tony found he and Steve hiding out in the courtyard.

“I’m appointing a new Secretary of State in a few days,” Ellis says and it’s the closest to an admission of guilt he’s going to come to the situation with Ross. Ellis had a lot of egg on his face after those revelations, but his administration could ride out the scandal. They still had the save by Rhodey and Tony to fall back on for foiling the attempts of the then Vice President and Aldrich Killian to assassinate him. He could take that all the way to the polls for a clean sweep win.

America loved a heroic rise almost as much as they did a mighty fall.

“I have already decided that their first order of business will be to participate in the re-writing of the Accords, amending them to allow greater flexibility for you and your people.” That was one way of putting the Avengers. Ellis paused as he contemplated Barnes and Rogers. “No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Wouldn’t ask for more.” Not couldn’t, but wouldn’t.

“Mr. Stark.” The president accepted that generosity.

“Mr. President.”

Then Ellis crossed the room, his detail at his side with the clear destination being to join his Secretary of Defense. The three men rose, and the secretary took care of introducing Barnes, after the president shook Rogers’ hand—he’d met him previously. Ellis gave Barnes five minutes, generous all things being equal, and then he had a quiet word with the secretary before he and his entourage left.

Finally, the room began to quietly buzz as freedom from the event radiates from the top down. One by one, the generals make their excuses and leave, when they’re down to the second tier of the brass, Rhodey gives him a weary nod and rolls over to him. “I was going to fly back tonight, but I think I’m going to bunk here. Sam is going to give me a ride to my apartment.” An apartment he kept because he was called to Washington so frequently.

“You sure? I can get you home and tucked in before dawn.” Maybe. Tony hadn’t looked at his watch in hours. He really hadn’t wanted to see his life bleeding away between the minutes.

“I’m sure. Get those two out of here while the going is good. Wilson said he wants to spend a couple of days here getting his affairs in order before he moves to New York permanently. He doesn’t have a place anymore, so he can stay at mine.”

“Sounds good.” He gave Rhodey’s shoulder a squeeze. “Thanks for tonight.”

“I’d say anytime,” Rhodey chided. “But you’re going to do that anyway, so you’re welcome…thanks for not bailing in the middle of it.”

“Definitely not saying anytime. You’d know I was lying.” But they both chuckled and Tony nodded to Wilson who was saying good night to Steve and Barnes.

On the walk to the quinjet, Tony was already thinking about cheeseburgers and where the nearest place was.

“You forgot to mention Secretary Manelli’s father was one of the Commandos,” Steve commented as he fell into step with him. Barnes walked slightly ahead, his head down and a cloud of exhaustion hanging over him.

“Did I?” Tony rubbed at his ear. “Huh.”

“Tony, about what you said to the pres—”

Pausing, he pivoted to face the other man. “I’m going to stop you right there, Cap. What I said or didn’t say isn’t a matter for conversation between us—ever. Clear?”

Barnes had slowed and turned, he and Steve exchanged some look. Whatever it was, Steve nodded slowly. “Clear.”

“Good,” he exhaled a long breath, and clapped Steve on the shoulder. “Now I need food. Real food. That means cheeseburgers, so everyone get on board. I’m going to find us the best burgers in three states.”

Twenty minutes later, he zoomed back up to the quinjet and landed on the open platform with three large bags stuffed with cheeseburgers and fries. Barnes actually laughed when Tony dumped one of the bags on him, then handed the other to Steve before the armor fully peeled back into the chest piece.

“You two thought I was kidding about drive thru, didn’t you?”

“To be fair, Tony, I was thinking the quinjet wouldn’t fit,” Steve told him soberly despite the shadows of exhaustion around his eyes. Seeing Cap tired was a weird thing, and usually limited to post battle scenarios. Big battles, more New York than when they apprehended Strucker.

“I used to hit them in a limo or a Maserati, and honestly…this isn’t my first trip through one in the suit.” He angled toward the pilot’s seat and checked the controls before setting the course. “Friday, take the wheel, yeah? I’m starving.”

“Got it Boss.”

“Oh and give me a sitrep, I feel like I’ve been lost for five years in some underhill fairy land—only one populated by stuffed shirts instead of hot elf chicks.” That was a weird image even for him, so he didn’t bother to see if he’d confounded the time twins, and leaned back to start eating.

“Ms. Romanoff has pulled a few decades of research on Roxxon Energy, including a prior project from the late 1940s.”

“Hydra?” Steve asked in between bites of his burger.

“No, at least not as far as we could tell. This seemed to be tied to a different, rather elite organization that Ms. Romanoff referred to as the blue blood stuffed shirt club.”

Tony laughed.

“All right, so what about them?”

“The research indicates many of the members died rather abruptly in 1947 related to a matter called the Isodyne Affair. Records are sparse for the time period, but Ms. Romanoff seemed to have access to data not online, specifically regarding an actress named Whitney Frost. SSR files included references to equipment provided by Howard Stark in cooperation with a Dr. Jason Wilkes using gamma radiation.”

Gamma radiation. Tony swiveled in the seat. “Let me see that file.”

“It’s not much Boss,” Friday explained as the details and schematics came online, it was a poor digital reproduction. “No wireframes are on record, either here or on the satellite. This is the closest we could find and it was buried in the files from SHIELD Ms. Romanoff dumped online.”

Sure enough, the Stark logo was in the bottom corner. “This is a cannon…what the hell would they need a cannon for and who was Whitney Frost?”

“Born Agnes Cully, Whitney Frost changed her name on her way to Hollywood. She became a well-respected and revered actress, with ties to a mob boss named Joseph Manfredi in addition to being the wife of senatorial candidate Calvin Chadwick. Chadwick died in 1947—cause of death laboratory accident. Frost is listed as a math and engineering prodigy, though she held no credentials having been denied entrance to colleges on the based on her gender. Frost was eventually arrested by Agent Carter of the SSR, and placed in a long-term care facility for the criminally insane. Frost passed away in 1995 due to complications as a result of renal failure.”

Okay the Carter link, Dad…none of it added up to Roxxon. “What does all this have to do with Roxxon?”

Steve and Barnes had moved up to join him, both of their attention fixed on the screen where Friday gave him pictures of the players involved before returning to the schematic.

“Uncertain, but Ms. Romanoff noted that Dottie Underwood was involved in this particular incident and related it to something called the Council of the Nine. She said she had to do a little more digging, but Boss—Hugh Jones, the founder of Roxxon made a singular fortune in 1947, at roughly the same time as the events concerning Whitney Frost.”

“Okay, we’re getting warmer but we’re still a few decades earlier than the Roxxon facility today.” While there was no love lost between Stark Industries and the Roxxon Corporation. “I’m assuming Ms. Romanoff drew us a map?” Which was why he’d asked Natasha in the first place, that and because the incident the night before suggested she’d been idle for far too long and hadn’t Clint warned them that her episodes seemed worse when she was off mission too long.

She was practically the poster child for workaholic, and Tony thought that had always been his gig. As much as he enjoyed having her back at the Tower and close at hand, he didn’t want be woken by two worried super soldiers because she’d vanished. Next time she might not be so easily traceable.

“She said she needed to think on it some more, but cited at least four different incidences with Roxxon including a mission she and Agent Barton completed for SHIELD.”

Well, it could be worse. She could have found nothing at all. The unease in his gut hadn’t gone away. “Where is the erstwhile Ms. Romanoff?”

“She was on her floor for a few hours, but she has returned to Captain Rogers’ floor.”

Her floor? Shit. “Friday, was she okay on her floor?” Steve and Barnes had both tensed, but they hadn’t seen what the feds did to it, Tony had. He’d meant to get it cleaned up but there hadn’t been time.

“She did not appear to suffer emotional distress, Boss. She was very quiet. She went through the boxes, and took a couple of items. I informed her you were ordering replacements for the books they destroyed. She spent some time in the studio, but the floors are too damaged for work. After she went down to the gym, then retired for the night. She’s been in privacy mode since.”

“Not sure Natalia wants you tracking her that closely,” Barnes commented, but the tightness of his brows betrayed his worry.

“If she didn’t want anyone to know, she’d put Friday in privacy mode,” Steve answered, before Tony could. “She knows it’s there…what did they do to her floor?”

“They pretty much shredded it. Tore up a lot of the wood from the dance studio, punched holes in the walls, packed up the things she had left there…my attorneys shut down their warrants and kept them from taking the stuff, I just haven’t had time to get it repaired fully. We’ve been a little busy.”

And it wasn’t ideal to have workmen in the Tower on the secure levels.

They’d have to figure that out. “Friday let’s get those work orders expedited. I want to put her floor back together for her.” Even if she had moved in with Rogers and Barnes, she still had her own floor and she should be able to use it.

Barnes rose, heading back to where he’d left his food, phone in hand, typing a message but if he got a response he didn’t let them know about it. Steve leaned against the co-pilot seat, his attention still on the screen displaying the schematics.

“Gamma cannon. Gamma can’t mean anything good can it?” Steve asked.

“Nope,” Tony said with a shrug. “At least not in my experience. It’s useful, but hard to harness and has some pretty dreadful side effects.” Neither of them had to mention Bruce, despite the obvious corollaries.

“47—she would still have been in Russia.”

“Except we know they used her for missions even before she _graduated.”_ Yeah, he loathed that term. Graduation should involve a cap, a gown, and maybe a quickie in the bathroom before strutting across the stage and getting a genuine smile from Mom and a half-nod from Dad along with a really great new car he wouldn’t be able to drive for a couple of years.

Steve bowed his head, sighing.

“On the upside, she probably knows all the great places to eat just about everywhere. We should make a bucket list of all the things we want to try and see how many she can take us straight to.” It was a weak joke, but he grew wearier the closer they got to the city.

“Maybe,” Steve laughed, but it was equally as hollow. “Maybe. You good up here?”

“I’m always good,” Tony said with a smirk, and Steve pushed away to walk back to Barnes. After polishing off the last of his burger, Tony opened the StarkPad to read his mail. There was still a proposal Pepper wanted him to review because the business was sound but the engineering seemed off. He had a half a dozen notes from various staff members of the generals who’d been in attendance and a two word note from Hunter Adrian, the president’s Deputy Chief of Staff.

_Looks good._

Which could refer to just about anything. Since Adrian’s been firmly on his side where Ross and the Accords were concerned, Tony accepted it for the good news it likely represented.

The message didn’t need a reply, so he didn’t send one. The next message in his box was from Parker. Sent less than two hours earlier, it snagged his attention. He hadn’t spoken to the kid since he took the suit. The harbor clean up had taken days, while he’d already pledged the money to build a new ferry—so had the U.N. committee, the U.S. government, and the city itself through a volunteer donation system. While there had been plenty of injuries and lost property, not a single civilian died that day. Two FBI agents had died, two were still in critical condition.

It could have gone so much worse.

Didn’t let Parker off the hook though, because despite everything he was doing it could have been an utter catastrophe he couldn’t stop. Those happened. That was the reality. But that kid wasn’t even sixteen years old, he did not need those deaths on his head.

He definitely didn’t need Parker’s death on his.

They had another thirty minutes before they’d reach the Tower, so he tabbed the email open.

 

_Mr. Stark,_

_I’ve been staring at this screen for two days trying to come up with even the right way to open. I kept adding dear and then taking it off again. Dear sounds formal, and formal would be good because this is supposed to be an apology. But formal also implies I don’t know you or you don’t know me and that’s not true either._

 

Tony suppressed a smirk. Peter spent another paragraph clarifying his debate on what

 

_As you can see, I decided to go with just Mr. Stark, and I hope that’s okay. I figured I’d explain why so hopefully you wouldn’t be insulted. Now that I’ve done that, I’d like to approach my reasons for reaching out._

_When we last spoke, you took the suit back. You said that I didn’t deserve to wear it if I was nothing without the suit. I would like to say, that’s fair. I didn’t like it, and I was mad. But I think I understand what that means—or at least I hope I do. You might mean something else, cause I’m 15 and you’re lots older…_

_Wait, that’s not what I meant. Just—I’m 15. You’re not. When you were my age you were already at MIT and I’m still in high school. You were building robots and I built my own web shooters. You were probably working on the prototypes for ARC reactor technology, and I’m working on making sure I get to class on time._

_My point is, I’m not you. I’m me. I have these powers for a reason. You said if I got hurt or killed, that would be on you. But Mr. Stark, if other people get hurt or killed because I’m not doing what I can with the powers that I have, then that’s on me._

_Maybe I don’t know who I am without the suit, but I’m learning. I was doing stuff before you made me the suit. Not to sound ungrateful, because I really appreciate everything you did for me and I respect why you don’t want to do it anymore._

Tony rubbed his forehead. Crap.

 

_But I can’t just sit around and do nothing. I wanted to tell you, I’m back to work again. I might not be fancy, but I can still get the job done. At least I’ll try. I wanted you to hear it from me rather than seeing it on the news._

_I don’t want to make you angry, Mr. Stark, I know you’re real busy with Captain America and putting the Avengers back together and I’m really happy that it’s going well, but I have to do this._

_I have to._

_Also—um—I told Aunt May I still have the internship, so if she happens to call you for some reason, would you please not tell her that I don’t anymore? She worries._

_I don’t want her to worry._

_Well, okay. I hope you’re okay, Mr. Stark._

_Peter_

He read it twice, and sighed as he spotted the tower through the windows. The kid had spirit, and determination. Tony’s gaze went back to the lines about what he’d been doing at fifteen versus what Peter was doing now. Peter could be in MIT, he had the brains, and the spunk, but he didn’t have Stark family resources and money, not to mention Peter had a lot of hard knocks.

But he was a good kid.

Impulsive—so was Tony.

Headstrong—definitely Tony.

Stubborn—definitely a comparison.

But what Peter wasn’t, was a narcissist. That kid wouldn’t stop, suit or no suit. Help or no help.

The kid was a giver and the world was one, big, fat taker.

Banging his head lightly against the back of the seat, he stared at the Tower.

Two spiders? One stone.

He’d flirted with the idea on the flight before the ferry.

Hitting reply on the email, he typed one line:

 

_You want that internship be at the Tower after school tomorrow. No excuses._

He hit send, and hadn’t even had a chance to set the StarkPad down before a response popped up.

 

_I’ll be there, Mr. Stark. Thank you._

Some things couldn't be fixed. He accepted the idea a long time ago. People died. Projects failed. Friendships ended. As soon as he landed, he opened the rear hatch, letting Barnes and Steve depart with a swift wave and called good night.

Tony watched them go.

Not everything could be fixed, but you couldn't know until you tried. He spent a lifetime fixing the problems, improving on the structure, and making things better. When he couldn't, those times when he failed, he built something new.

The new element to replace palladium. Thanks Dad.

The new company to replace weapons mongering.

A new Tony to avoid destroying more than he could build.

New Accords to rebuild what the old ones had helped destroy.

So if he couldn't fix it, then maybe providing the kid with a new start, a new foundation was the way to go. She wouldn't be charmed by cute or swayed by enthusiasm. 

She was going to kick his ass, but she'd make him better.

She'd make him safer.

Yeah, the kid wasn’t going to stop and Nat needed something to do.

This could work out really well.

He hoped.

Finishing the shutdown, he grabbed the StarkPad and his own trash, and strolled off the jet. 

“Friday, lock the barn, we're closed for the night. Only priority calls.”

“Good night, Boss.”

“Good night, Baby Girl.”

Tony stripped out of the suit and into sweats and a t-shirt before making a cup of coffee and settling into bed to do a little light reading on Isodyne, Roxxon, and whatever the Circle of Nine was.


	5. Widow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are back, and the evening reveals some of the cracks around them and how they can go about fixing them.

**Chapter Five**

**Widow**

**Natasha**

 

 

The sound of the elevator had her eyes opening and her hand on the knife between the couch cushions before she fully registered who was arriving. Between one blink and the next, she caught sight of one dark head and the other light. Her brain fumbled as she balanced the blade.

“Stevie… wait.”

James. Steve.

All at once she relaxed, then flipped the blade so she could set it on the table. It was half dark in the living room save for a low light in the kitchen and the flickering shadows cast by the television.

“Hey,” Steve’s voice wrapped around her like a warm blanket, which was great because her mind wasn’t kicking all the way up yet. Rubbing a hand against her eyes, she tried to chase away the sleep.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and started to rise, but warm arms slid around her and then she was settling against the cold buckles and stiff tension of body armor. “Did you get called out again?”

It sounded pitifully like a whine, and she swallowed the complaint.

“No,” Steve murmured, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We just got back…”

“Are you watching a documentary on baseball?” James didn’t bother to contain his surprise, nor the hint of delight.

A swivel of a step, and Steve turned. “What?”

“Don’t be rude, I was just trying to learn about it.” She’d had to do something, they were supposed to be back hours ago. “There’s food in the kitchen…I ordered it from the deli…” But a yawn tore through her words and her jaw cracked.

“Come on sleepy head, let’s get you in bed.”

Less than a minute later, Steve pulled back the blankets and slid her into the bed. The sheets were cool and she shivered. When Steve went to retreat, she sat up and caught his hand.

“Hey…” His palm was rough, the callouses familiar and heat welcome. “You okay?” She could focus, and even in the half-darkness she could read the worry in his face.

“Just tired,” he told her, then carded his fingers through her hair with his free hand. “It’s been a long day. And you were sleeping…go back to sleep, okay?”

Twenty-four hours, or near on since she’d taken off the night before. And Steve had run the mission on the Gulf, then gone straight to D.C. She’d missed him, missed them both. “I’m okay, I’ll get up and you guys can eat and…”

“We ate on the quinjet on the way back.” It almost sounded like an apology. He smelled faintly of tobacco—probably James smoking—sweat, and heavy soap.

“Have you showered since the oil derrick?”

“No,” Steve sighed. “Just a wash up on the quinjet.”

That decided her. He sounded so damn weary. Hand in his, she slid off the bed and tugged him. “Come on, Cap. Let’s get you out of that and into the shower. Then we’ll see if you need more food.”

“Nat…”

“Shh.” She rose up on her tiptoes and pressed a finger to his lips. “Let me take care of you, yeah?” She hadn’t been able to be there, to smooth over any rough waters or give him a quiet excuse to leave any troubling conversations. Shaking off the last vestiges of sleep, she didn’t hesitate to meet him as he lowered his head. The slow brush of his lips over hers… 

He dropped his hands to her hips, and curled his fingers against the fabric of James’ shirt—which as promised she had put back on to wait for them. The tentative brush turned fierce and he melted into the kiss, then he delved his tongue against hers like a starving man. The whisper of his breath as they parted then came together again sent a chill down her spine.

Steve lifted and she hitched her thighs to his hips so he didn’t have to bend so far and then she licked her way into his mouth, tasting, and teasing him. The odd little hollow carved out by their argument, left lonely after he’d had to leave, filled in again. They found an unexpected rhythm of gentle biting kisses followed by long, slow exploratory ones. Hot and warm. Fast and slow. Demanding and giving. It was enough to make her drunk. The buckles on his uniform bit into her, a steady pressure as firmly reminding that he was right there as the heat of his hands gliding over her shirt as he shifted his grip from her hips to her ass—and the moment he discovered she wasn’t wearing any panties.

His head jerked up and he stared at her. “Christ…” And his voice so perfectly echoed James right down to the Brooklyn—or maybe it was that James echoed him, she had no idea anymore. But she _knew_ that tone. That little gasp in the word declaring the raw effort it took to push it out. Below all of it, the hunger it revealed and a shudder teased right up her spine.

“Nat,” she corrected with a whisper as she stroked her blunt nails against his beard. It was as soft as it was thick, and the longer he had it the more she found she liked it.

His sinful mouth was slightly open, his lips red and swollen _._ The rise and fall of his chest coupled with the very distinct erection she pressed against reinforced the wild desire she tasted in that kiss and damn if it didn’t intoxicate her. There was just something about Steve, so fierce and proud and determined… and she squeezed her thighs to lock her balance as she teased his lower lip, never once looking away from his eyes.

When his thumb slipped beneath the rucked shirt and stroked over her bare hip, he stilled. Then slowly, so slowly she thought he might be doing it on purpose, he spread his palm over her skin, cupping her ass.

“Hi,” he whispered, and her nipples tightened at the roughness in his voice.

“Hi.” Scraping her teeth against his lower lip, she delighted at his groan.

“I missed you,” he told her and it had her curling her toes. It was one thing to spar with Steve, to climb him like a tree, and vie with him for the grapple, or the hold, or even the throw. There was so much power contained in his body and he was forever holding himself back. She always had to push him, to drive him out of his head so he would let go, and actually fight. It had always thrilled her when he did, because to test herself against his strength had been the most intoxicating thing about him—until now. Now, she could practically feel the corded tautness in his muscles as he held still, and held her firm with the banded steel in his arms. The roughness of his armor a direct contrast against her only wearing a shirt—hell, she’d left her knife in the living room, and though she’d scattered some of her weapons in the room and the rest of the floor—and had a fairly good idea of where James had stowed his—she had only her muscle and her skill to keep her safe if Steve for some reason…

The moment she realized she was cataloging all the ways she could hurt him right now and make him let her go, she froze. There were so many ways she could, she could sink her teeth right into the flesh of his mouth and bite him until he bled. Pop his exposed, unprotected ears to interfere with his balance. Hook her legs tighter, and twist. His center of gravity was off when he held her like this, his focus on her bare skin and not on defense. She could lock her arms on his neck, slipping around him as she knocked him down, and get the right pressure on his carotid and she could stop the blood going to his…

“Nat,” he said slowly, his voice far steadier than he had any right to be. “Easy, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

That was the problem. He was right there, and so dangerously exposed to someone who actively cycled through all the ways to hurt him while in the middle of seducing him. “Put me down,” she said it more as a request than an order as she forced her fingers to unclench and flattened her palms. Then she unlocked her muscles from gripping his hips.

He didn’t hesitate, shifting his grip to her hips and steadying her before he set her down.

“It’s okay,” he told her, and he had his hands up and palms open. The sight alone crushed her.

He shouldn’t have to know how to do that. Turning away, she swallowed. “You should go shower, and I’ll get the food ready.” They needed to eat, and she needed to be looking after them after a brutal day, a day she’d made harder in the first place, and not—not whatever it was in her that sent her spiraling right back into her training.

“Natasha.” The command in his voice stopped her dead, but she didn’t want to look back. Didn’t want to see the keen understanding in those blue eyes. Because he didn’t understand, not fully—and if the universe were kind which was a fucking lie, he would _never_ be able to understand. But he tried so hard. He _wanted_ to understand and that kind of caring was not what she deserved and he should have so much more than…

“Stop.” The distance between them had shrunk. Despite the heat of him at her back, he didn’t touch her. They’d established that boundary. “Please,” he added the last as a whisper, and the little puff of it blew against her hair.

Consciously taking control of her breathing, she halted her flight. Not running away, but not fighting was more draining than anything else. Movement flickered in her periphery, and she caught the flash of silver as James moved away from the door to her room. How long had he been there? The fact he gave them some privacy after making sure she wouldn’t hurt Steve wasn’t lost on her. She had asked him for that promise and he’d given it freely as he asked her for the same.

“Can I hold you?” The simple question bruised her heart. How fair was it to him to have to even ask for that kind of permission when not even five minutes earlier she’d had him locked in between her thighs?

Not quite trusting her voice, she slid back a step and closed the narrow distance between them. He coiled his arms around her as her back bumped into his chest. He slid an arm diagonal across her middle and gripped her shoulder gently as he banded the other arm just below her breasts. It wasn’t a grapple hold. There was no force behind it, and his fingers didn’t bruise her. Despite how large he was, how he could completely enfold her, there was no threat coming from him.

No threat at all.

“I’m sorry,” she exhaled. She seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

“Don’t need to be,” he promised against her hair. “It’s all new to me, too.”

And that made her feel worse. Pressing her cheek to his biceps, she blew out another breath. She needed to find the words to explain this to him, and maybe in a manner that didn’t make her sound like a soulless psychotic killer.

Once a monster…

“I’ve missed you,” he repeated gently. The buckles on his suit were cold where they dug into her through the shirt. She reveled in the feeling, it kept her grounded in the here and now.

“I’m here.” It seemed a paltry assurance.

“I know, but we don’t always feel like it.” That hesitance was her fault. “That’s on me, I’ve been so busy, and I keep leaving.”

The tug in her middle wasn’t tears or loneliness or jealousy or even envy. It was just selfishness. “That’s going to happen,” she reminded herself, more than him. “You’re the team leader. Everyone is going to need you. They always did.”

Even when she’d been the one firmly planted at his side, the whole team had needed him. They’d come to him at all hours of the day or night. How many evenings had they abandoned a movie because Sam had something come up at the VA or Rhodey needed Steve’s input on some new side project the military wanted him to do in conjunction with his Avengers work or Vision wanted to ask questions.

With Sam back and the others returning, it would likely get worse. She needed to get used to it now…

“They need you, too,” Steve was saying. “ _I_ need you.”

Running her fingers over the back of his hand, she wished he was out of the suit so she could just touch him. But maybe it was better to serve as a reminder. Cap was always going to be Cap even without the Widow. She needed to fix this, needed to make this okay for him. “You should shower,” she rubbed her cheek against his sleeve, letting the roughness rasp on her skin. A little bit of discomfort could go a long way toward holding off an episode, even if the shadows of this one seemed to linger.

When she slotted her fingers between his, she said, “You deserve better than this.”

“Whatever.” It was such a careless answer, as if he didn’t give a damn.

“Steve, I’m serious.” They both did. James needed someone who could be steady and a rock, not someone he had to constantly worry about. Steve needed someone who could put him first, who would let him take care of them and not develop a series of plans to kill him while kissing him.

“I know,” he soothed, rocking her a little. “Did you eat? None of those bags or containers looked open.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. The automatic yes died unspoken. “James made me pancakes this morning.”

“Which you didn’t eat,” James said from the other room, his voice carrying. “Save for a couple of bites. Fridge is still exactly as I left it, there’s also the same amount of apples…” If he so much as… “Friday, did you track Natasha eating at any point while you were able to monitor her today?”

Bastard.

“No, Sergeant Barnes.”

Traitor.

“Then we’re all going to eat,” Steve told her firmly, all his earlier fatigue seemed to have vanished. “Then we can all get sleep.”

She wanted to squirm, and eel away from him, and yet she didn’t. Discipline kept her still. If she gave into the desire, she’d reveal a weakness. “I’m not hungry,”

And she really wasn’t. She hadn’t been hungry since…

“I don’t care.” Like his earlier whatever, the response was a far cry from how Steve had been recently. This was a lot closer to STRIKE team leader. “You need food, Natasha. I don’t care if it’s soup or one of those foul protein drinks you like. You need to eat.” Then he dipped his head to her ear. “Please?”

One word and he unlocked her resistance. He wasn’t ordering her or demanding she do something. He was asking her to— _I need you._ “Fine, but you need to shower.” She acquiesced, but he’d been up for a full day and needed to take care of himself, too.

“I can do that.” Steve said, then pressed another kiss to the top of her head. Quieter, he added, “I know this isn’t easy for you. You let me in before—will you let me in now so I can help? Even if you don’t think I can.”

Her heart squeezed. The pain in her chest so tight it was hard to breathe. This was why love was for children and why attachments had been forbidden. Attachment made her weak… Shoving those thoughts to the side, she wiggled so Steve would let her turn and he loosened his arms, but didn’t let her go. Looking up at him, she sucked in a deep breath.

She was no coward.

“I’ll try.”

His smile filled her with more heat than standing under the noon day sun. “That’s all I need.” Then he pressed a very sweet kiss to her forehead. “Now…Bucky?”

“Right here.” James was at the door, leaning against the frame dressed only in a pair of loose pajama bottoms and a tank top with his hair still damp and slicked back from the shower.

“Look after her, yeah? I’m gonna get out of the monkey suit.”

The comment pulled a rough chuckle from James, and he extended his hand, fingers curled beckoningly. He wasn’t going to manhandle her unless she asked. Another difference. Steve was so tactile, he could wrap around her like a python and hold her for days. Hell, if she let him, he’d probably carry her from room to room. But she and James were a little more reticent.

Steve met her gaze, then winked. “Bucky did great with the generals, hell of a night and he was a champ. Let him tell you about it.” Translation, take care of James, too.

She could do that.

Pushing up onto her tiptoes, she nuzzled against his beard enjoying the way it teased her skin and whispered, “Yes, sir.” At this distance, she couldn’t miss the start of surprise or the possessively pleased look in his eyes before he blinked.

Better.

Much better.

She gave his fingers a squeeze as she headed for James with Steve right behind her. “What’s for food, anyway?”

“Cheeseburgers,” James deadpanned. “Lots of cheeseburgers.”

Steve laughed, and she glanced between them. “You guys like burgers. I ordered from the diner on 45th.”

“That’s perfect,” Steve gave her another smile, and then he crossed to his bedroom and vanished inside. Natasha stared after him, chewing the inside of her lip. She really needed to be less fucked up about all of this. James kissed her and she panicked for some stupid ass reason. Steve kisses her and she began plotting all the ways to kill him.

“Want to talk about it?” James asked when she didn’t move.

“I cataloged every way I could take him down,” she told him, low voiced and almost mechanical. “The fastest, most efficient way to kill him before he could respond.”

Blowing out a breath, James nodded. “Okay. Burger?”

“Don’t do that,” she snapped at him, and slapped his chest. “Don’t just dismiss it.”

“Doll, I’ll do it if I damn well please. You were trained to kill men with your body. _That_ part I remember clear as day. I _remember_ having to watch you walk off with some bastard and let them put their hands all over you so you could get whatever piece of idiotic information they needed, then you would have to kill him with your bare hands. I remember …” He paused a second and he blinked. “I remember it used to scare you when we got close—at first.”

Natasha blinked. “What?”

“No…not scared. Uneasy. Well…fuck.” The last word exploded out of him, and he turned away, his expression a dark storm.

What the hell just happened? She followed. “I don’t see you or Steve as marks. You know that right?”

“Yes Natalia, I do know that.” Yet even his assurance rang a little hollow. He raked a hand through his hair and his expression had gone distant, the past swallowing the present and leaving them choking on it. Sometimes it helped to have someone guide you back out, and other times it was better to be left alone to navigate the treacherous corridors filled with their deadly traps.

“Natalia…” He called when she peeled off from following him. Steve’s gear bag and shield were sitting by the elevator.

“I’m just going to move his gear,” she called. “You know he hates it when it's just lying around.” Steve couldn’t relax until it had been stowed and right now, she needed movement rather than stillness. Something James said rubbed her the wrong way, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

The bag with his uniform was heavy, and it reeked. Unzipping it, she checked inside and grimaced. The smell was even worse. The material was coated in some kind of sludge—unidentified sludge from an oil derrick with a mysterious lab that had been destroyed. She couldn’t say she was overly fond of anyone’s mysterious science projects. “Okay, I’m feeling less bad about not going on that mission.”

She lifted the bag with one hand and snagged the shield with the other. James jerked his attention up from her ass—yes she’d known it was bare and hanging out when she knelt and no, she didn’t care. He frowned when she held up the uniform. “I’m going to take this to the lab level real quick.”

“I can do that,” James said heading for her, and she tossed him the shield instead. It took a little effort to send it spinning but he caught it easily with his metal hand. “Really?”

“It’s kind of like Frisbee,” she teased. She needed to lighten it up a little and she really needed a minute to herself. Hitting the elevator call button with her elbow, she wasn’t surprised when the doors slid open easily. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

As soon as the doors closed, she said, “Lab level decon 1 please, Friday.”

“Should I alert the Boss?”

“No,” Natasha told her. “It should be fine and I’m probably just being paranoid. Do me a favor and erase the last half of that sentence.”

“If it will help, Ms. Romanoff, I’m getting no radiation signatures off Captain Rogers’ uniform.”

“That does help, but can you say the same for biological or chemical?” The question slipped out as the elevator doors opened and she padded barefoot out into the frigid cold level. The labs were often kept colder than the rest of the building, but she usually had on more clothes. Sucking it up, she padded over to a decontamination chamber and set the duffle inside, then used a glove to pull it out. She already got some of the crap on her fingers, but better to not play with fire.

“I’ll do an analysis on the material if you can place some in the container,” Friday offered. Since she had it on her hand, she just nodded.

Once the uniform was spread out, she slid out and shut the door—locking it all inside, then entered the code to begin decontamination process. If there were any biological gook on it, that would go away. Steve would have done it himself normally. That was…that was an oversight on his part. He was usually a stickler for procedure and one was that they treated all their uniforms if they exposed to unidentified, foreign materials.

Chances were, he’d be fine even with exposure. His serum pretty much insulated him from everything, but still—the meeting with the generals had probably distracted him and after her disappearance the night before.

It took her a couple of extra minutes to scrape some of the sludge off her fingers and into the petri dish. Once it was loaded, she washed her hands with the soap Tony kept at all the lab sinks and the dark stain gradually vanished. Satisfied, she padded for the elevator. “Thanks Friday.”

“You're welcome, Ms. Romanoff.”

The activity and the time earned her some equilibrium. She stepped out of the elevator on their floor in time to see Steve and James facing each other across a counter involved in a very serious, and hushed conversation. They broke off immediately at her arrival.

Steve looked relieved, but James wore an unreadable expression. “You were supposed to be eating,” the former admonished her.

“Don’t leave your stuff lying around and I would have been already,” she retorted, then stuck her tongue out at him. “Your uniform was gross…was that just from the lab or the smoke?”

“It was probably from everything, and I could have taken care of that.” His frown seemed directed more at himself than her, and she shrugged.

“I like feeling useful.” It was a light comment, and meant to be light. Too bad it didn’t come out that way. She balanced her hand on the counter as she slid onto the barstool. James pushed a recently warmed burger in front of her. With two expectant gazes fixed on her, she made a face. “Since we're all up—how did it go?”

“Exhausting,” was James’ only comment, but he never took his gaze off her or the burger. There was no escaping the fact they wanted her to eat and if she didn’t, it was only going to worry them more. Fine, she’d forced herself to go hungry before, certainly she could eat a meal with the same discipline.

To prove a point, she took a bite of the burger and chewed it while flicking her gaze to Steve. James hadn’t wanted to go to the event, and she couldn’t fault him. Putting on a display for any crowd, no matter how well meaning, had been one of the more difficult challenges of her acclimatization at SHIELD.

“It went better than I’d even hoped,” Steve admitted. He leaned against the counter, the heat rolling off him from his recent shower warming her side. “Turns out the Secretary of Defense isn’t just a _fan_ of the Howling Commandos like the generals, he’s the son of one.”

“Really?” She managed after swallowing the first bite. Did she really need to take a second? Steve’s eyes had relaxed some as she ate, but James’ hadn’t so much as flickered. Fine, she took another bite. It was not a bad burger, even reheated the meat was juicy, the cheese a good flavor and texture and the bun had some kind of crispness to it despite sitting around waiting for them.

“Dino Manelli, he was a private when I knew him,” Steve continued, reaching for one of his own burgers. “He was an actor before the war, kept up at it after. Did real well for himself.” That lead to a few stories about Dino and the Howling Commandos, which allowed James to relax gradually but not his vigilance. It wasn’t until she finished the whole burger that he seemed to take a step back.

While detailing the president’s drop in, Steve’s tone shifted a little. Elements of hope tangled with nervousness. “It was a long night,” he admitted. “And I know we would never have been there without Tony, and I don’t think we would have gotten through it without Sam and Rhodey. I think it went well.”

But from James' expression and body language with his arms folded and leaning back against the counter as he listened to them—he didn’t seem as certain. When she raised her eyebrows, he shrugged. “No one tried to throw me in a cell or pointed a gun at me.”

“He’s downplaying it,” Steve said as though he confided in her. “He was actually charming a few times once we got through the first round of introductions.”

“Can we not talk about it anymore?” James asked pointedly. “I didn’t want to be there, but I went. It’s done. They either go for the pardon or they don’t—but if getting the pardon means I have to do that again. I’ll pass.”

“You know it’s okay to feel antsy,” she told him. “To feel like you’re going to vibrate right out of your skin because you spent the whole night in threat assessment mode.” When his gaze fixed on her again, she smiled. “Six months in isolation,” she reminded him. “Six months where the only people I saw were Clint, the doctors for their tests, Fury and Coulson. Six months of the same walls, the same places, and nothing else. Then suddenly I’m in rooms too large to cover, without a weapon, and everyone around me was a viable threat.”

As she peeled off that piece of her past and laid it out for him, he relaxed minutely.

Nudging her plate away, she leaned toward Steve and he rewarded her by closing the gap and bracing her. It was much warmer this way, too. Her feet were still cold. “In some ways, I had it easier because my training and my work constantly threw me into places where I had to be someone else in a crowd of people that could all be threats and often times were.”

And she could do this because James needed it. He needed to understand just how far he’d come.

“But I was always undercover. I was safely someone else.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “Did either of you see the congressional hearings after SHIELD fell?”

They both nodded. “I didn’t understand them then,” James told her. “But I couldn’t stop staring at you.”

She smiled. “Every person in that room was a threat. Every single one. And I was out there, exposed as me. Not one of my covers. Just me.”

Steve’s arm tightened around her.

“I’m not telling you this to feel badly for me,” she said more to Steve than to James. “But to show you that—you’ve been back with us for just a few weeks and before that you were keeping a low profile, avoiding notice and crowds.”

James nodded once.

“So what you did tonight was incredible and I’m proud of you. I bet you impressed them more than you know, and if you didn’t—that’s on them not you.” Because he would have proven he was human and not a thing, and he needed to know what more than anyone else.

A small smile tugged at his lips. “Thanks, doll.”

“You’re welcome.” The tension cording them all seemed to ease back a little.

“And on that note,” Steve said, dropping a kiss onto her lips—a quick, light brush she barely got to enjoy before he pulled back. “I’m going to hit the sack. I’m tired.”

Disappointment curled through her, but she tamped it down. Steve had an exhausting day.

“But later, will you have lunch with Bucky and I?” He grinned. “Maybe we can call it brunch, but just the three of us—we sit down, spend some time together?”

She’d like that. “You never have to ask me.” It seemed obvious she would be there, but then again… “But yes, I would like that very much.” She’d missed them both.

“Good,” he said with another smile, then tucked the hair behind her ear. He glanced at James and they had another one of those silent conversations. Then after a hug, he headed for his own bedroom and had the door closed before she realized he meant to sleep in his own room.

After earlier…she’d thought.

“C’mon,” James said as he circled the counter. “Leave the food and the dishes, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

She let him nudge her toward her room, diverting only long enough to grab her knife from the table. They’d already turned off the television. He studied the layout of her room and the bed, then shoved the bed—the whole thing over toward the corner. When she raised her eyebrows, he shrugged. “You’re getting the wall, I’ve got the rest.”

Biting her lip, she sighed. “James…”

“Nope. You said I could sleep in here, and this will be easier on both of us.” There was a fierceness to him she didn’t want to argue with.. “You need to feel safe and I need to make sure you are.”

The position put her gun out of reach, but James moved the nightstand over so he could access it. Then showed her where he’d already stowed his. Satisfied, she crawled over to the far side against the wall and he waited for her to get comfortable before he slid in next to her.

“Friday sleep mode, please,” Natasha called. “And good night.”

“Good night, Ms. Romanoff. Sergeant Barnes.” Then the room was bathed in shadows. It wasn’t quite true dark. There was a small light in the corner, that let off a low illumination. Enough to avoid perfect blackness.

She couldn’t stand it when the darkness suffocated her. Easing over she touched a hand to James’ chest. A request to see if he wanted her close or farther away. When he curled his right arm around her and pulled her over, she pressed her cheek to his shoulder. He stroked her hair but lay quietly.

The silence drew out, and it pulled her nerves taut.

“James?”

“It’s all right Natalia, we’re exhausted. And you’re letting me hold you, so let me hold you. We don’t have to do anything more than that…”

Why was he?

Natasha frowned. This was not how she expected this to go. Granted she hadn’t expected them to be gone so long, but she’d spent hours cleaning up her floor, she’d worked out, she’d showered again and she ordered the food.

God she was so broken.

Two men she adored and she could barely stand it. Why the hell did this seem to be getting worse instead of better? It had been easier in Switzerland than at any point after she returned to the Tower.

“I’m sorry you had to do all of this on your own,” he told her finally. “When you got out, when you came to SHIELD. You had to face all these challenges without Steve or I.” He snorted a half laugh. “We were in the ice and you were out in the cold.”

She pressed her lips to his shoulder. “I had Clint.”

“But you didn’t trust him right away,” he said that like he knew the truth of it, like he could see it. “How long before you stopped looking for the ask, for the knife in the back, for the moment he turned on you?”

The horrible thing was, it had taken a while. Longer than she was comfortable admitting, if she were honest. Swallowing, she turned the memory over in her mind. One of the most comfortable parts of her friendship with Clint was how easily he’d adapted to her moods, how he’d seemed to understand what she was saying even when she could say nothing. Part of that was his own background, and the abuses in his childhood. It gave him insight, and patience.

“Eighteen months,” she said finally. It was probably a little longer, but eighteen months after agreeing to come in with Clint, she’d tried to sleep with him. She’d thought that was where their natural closeness was going, and she cared about him. Cared more than she was comfortable with to be honest, and he’d turned her down so gently and then hadn’t changed one whit of his behavior in her direction. He was still her friend, he still teased, he still had her back, and eventually he introduced her to Laura and she got it.

Somewhere in there, Clint became safe.

She didn’t feel safe here.

The whole idea felt like a betrayal, she tensed.

“It’s okay, Natalia,” James whispered, and then he rolled onto his side and pulled her snug to him, she wrapped an arm around him. “We know…we’re slow, but we’re figuring it out.”

“You’re not slow,” she told him, her voice muffled. Hell what did Steve think? “I…”

“He knows,” James repeated. Then she thought back to the intense discussion she’d interrupted. “He chose to go sleep in his room, I told him you wouldn’t mind if he was in here and I didn’t either, but he wants to give you space to feel safe.”

Closing her eyes, she knocked her head lightly against James’ shoulder blade. “How could you know when I didn’t? It doesn’t make sense. Neither of you are going to hurt me.”

“But we did,” James reminded her. “We both have. I—I still struggle with a lot of things, but I only feel _safe_ with two people.”

Her throat went tight.

“I know what _safe_ is. Steve does too, but he’s different from us and we like that.”

She could only nod fervently.

“So when you have those moments, you have to tell us. You have to let him in…I can figure it out…”

“Earlier…” She didn’t have to finish the question.

“Yes.” He’d seen the threat in her eyes.

Of all the things she’d overcome. To be stuck in this one seemed…she’d managed a sexual relationship with Matt. How was this different?

Because she’d lied to Matt. All the time. She’d lied to him. Controlled the information flow. Vanished when she needed to, and only came back on her terms. She’d not surrendered a single piece of herself to him…

“Just like you saw me slipping in the kitchen,” he admitted. “I didn’t _hate_ being at the meeting, but I didn’t like being there either.”

“I meant it though,” she reminded him. “I’m very proud of you.”

She could practically feel his smile against her forehead. “Thank you.”

Somehow, she had to figure this out. She had to fix it. Because the only other alternative was to leave, and a part of her already thought that was a better idea. She’d _chosen_ to come here, she could choose to…

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” he murmured softly. “You may not feel safe with us yet, but can you trust us enough to let us earn it?”

How did he do that? Though it was more irritating this time than adorable.

“I am not that predictable,” she argued.

“No, but I know the training,” he admitted and it took all the air out of her argument. “I know the need to put distance between yourself and what has the potential to endanger you.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” she argued again, pushing away to sit up. She was still crowded against the wall. “I _know_ that. I have a hard enough time getting Steve to cut loose in a spar, and neither of you even made a move when I was standing outside the quinjet.”

“Okay,” James said slowly, laying a hand on her thigh. Just his left hand, the cool metal cool against her skin. “But that was only a couple of days after I tried to choke you to death and break your back. A short time since Steve walked away from you, leaving you behind to face whatever came—then we did it again.”

But she understood the difference. “It’s not the same thing.”

“No, this is scarier,” he admitted. “Why do you think I wouldn’t let Steve find me? Why do you think he didn’t find me until I finally _stopped_ running?”

“You couldn’t remember everything…”

“No, but those memories came back. The ones of Steve, of home, and of who I’d been…and if the best friend of Captain America can spend nearly a century forgotten and isolated as nothing more than the Winter Soldier, how the hell would I ever be safe again if anyone knew who I was?” It was a harsh question. “You Natalia? You never let anyone see you, even after you gave up your covers.”

Had she let him see her once?

“It’s only been a few weeks. So we take it one day at a time.”

“You sure you don’t want to do this with someone capable of giving you more?” It was an empty question, but she owed it to him. “I’m still a fugitive, I’m still going to want to go…and…I’m not sure I know how to stay.”

Always on the move. They couldn’t lock you down if they couldn’t find you. But who was she really running from now?

“You’re the only one I want,” James told her. “The only one who ever saw _me_ even when I didn’t know who I was. I told you—you reminded me of what it is to be human. If you go…I’m going to follow.”

She chuckled. The promise would probably worry some people, but not her. No, it made her feel better for some reason. She’d pushed Matt away, and she’d shoved Bruce off a cliff.

“For what it’s worth…Steve’s going to be right there with me. It would probably take both of us to catch you anyway.” The dry tone made her laugh for real.

“If I shoved you off a cliff?” She didn’t know why she had to ask it, but she did.

“I’d climb back up. Might be a little annoyed, but I’d get there.” There was a hint of a smile in his voice. “You shot me in the face, shocked me with one of your tasers to disable my arm, fired a rocket launcher at me, hit me repeatedly in the head, and hit me in the jewels _more_ than once. That’s only in our recent acquaintance. I think you’re underestimating your appeal, doll.”

The droll statement made her laugh out loud, and she nearly missed the shuffle step and the door to the bedroom opening. James sat up, and there was a blade balanced in his hand as the light cut through the room.

Steve.

The tension leaked out of her spine and James lowered the knife.

“You two are supposed to be sleeping…” He chided them, but he was wearing a grin.

“Well, gosh Dad, me and Natalia were just talking.”

“And laughing,” Steve commented, arms folded as he grinned at them. “Actually laughing.”

Regret flooded her. She’d welcome them home to more drama, almost as much as he’d had to deal with before he left. Maybe they were all messed up, but they were hers and she could fix it.

She could fix herself.

“I guess that means you have to stay and keep us from getting into trouble.” She patted the bed next to her, and James laughed, and rolled out with one motion.

“C’mon Steve, we’re putting the bed back. If she’s got watch on either side of her, it can be in the middle.”

That prompted a snort. “James…”

“Ahh,” he pointed a finger at her and when she opened her mouth again, he repeated the ahh.

“I wouldn’t argue with him Nat, he gets pure pigheaded stubborn when he’s decided he’s in charge of your health.” The wryness in Steve’s tone suggested long familiarity. She pushed away from the wall, but they had the bed up and moving—the whole thing, with her in the middle and it made her laugh again.

She was still chuckling when Steve slid onto the bed on her left, and James curled up on her right. Nudging a leg over James’s, she curled around Steve’s arm and smiled when James slotted himself right against her back. It’d been over a week since she’d slept with them like this.

“Better?” Steve asked.

“Much,” she promised him and James gave her hip a squeeze.

“I’m really glad,” Steve told her in a very sober whisper. “Now both of you shut up and sleep.”

“Or what?” James challenged. “Are you going to ground us?”

“No,” Steve said amiably, rolling onto his side and curling an arm around her. James loosened his grip some to make room and then Steve shoved him clear off the bed and tugged her close to keep her from going with him.

James let out a shout, and she started laughing all over again. Somehow, that turned into the strangest pillow fight ever as they kept maneuvering her around to keep her out of the line of fire, but the time they’d finished though her pillows were dead and in feathers all over the room.

With a poof, she sent a little feather off her nose, and then eyed the pair of them where they were panting and grinning madly.

“You know…” she told them as she slid off the bed and surveyed the damage. The blankets and sheets were on the floor, the mattress was off center, at some point her knife had been driven right into the wood of the nightstand—the would take some buffing—and all of her pillows had transformed them into a magical feather fairyland. Even the boys had feathers in their hair.

She picked up her phone and made a point of dusting herself off before she aimed it at them and snapped a couple of pictures.

“We know?” Steve prompted her patiently, and rolled his hand in the air for her to continue.

Phone in hand, she smiled at them both. “This just means we destroy your rooms next…” And she was off running before they could respond, she raced for Steve’s room since his door was open and she hit his bed at a rolling tumble and had a pillow in hand before they caught up.

James took the first hit right across the face, and this time it was a three way war.

By the time they’d finished, there wasn’t a pillow left on their floor, she was weary from laughing, and nearly boneless with the tired. They swept off the feathers and ended up just sleeping in James’ room—since his was the last to be raided, and as soon as she was tucked between them, she was out.


	6. Synergy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phone calls, brunch date, plans, more plans, and a favor.

**Chapter Six**

**Synergy**

**Natasha**

 

 

Surrounded by warmth on all sides, Natasha burrowed to try and get away from the insistent beeping noise. When she couldn’t find a pillow, she slipped deeper into the blanket, and then pressed her face against a chest. Some distant part of her brain identified Steve, and that was good. Steve would keep her warm…

And the beeping came again.

Her well-muscled and toned pillow shifted, and she protested. Her eyes were glued shut and she wanted to stay that way.

Damn the beeping it came again.

Another shift, and then she was being maneuvered and she rolled over to pillow her head on an arm as warmed metal slipped around her waist. Then lips brushed her forehead and some of the warmth went away.

“Hello?” Steve’s low voice drifted away. “No…no I’m glad you called…”

Slipping deeper, she drifted until buzzing began to vibrate through to chase away the dreams. Groaning, she twisted and dragged the blankets over her head. Why couldn’t they all just go away? The warmth curled around her grumbled, and the buzzing cut off abruptly as James snarled, “What?”

Then his warmth vanished from her back, and he grunted something she could barely make out. By the time she managed to sit up, both Steve and James were out of James’ room and she was alone in the middle of the bed. Flicking away a feather, she debated just falling back and returning to sleep. It was so tempting…

Only her phone hummed a quick three beat pulse. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she crawled over the bed looking for it. The second three beat pulse let her narrow it down. Leaning over the side, she found her phone just under the edge of the bed. Pulling it out, she peered blearily at the name on the screen then hit answer.

“Hey,” she croaked. She needed water.

Scratch that, she needed water and more sleep. Her eyes felt like sand pits and her muscles were torn between a liquid and cramping state that made no sense to her tired-addled brain.

“Good afternoon to you,” Isaiah greeted in his dry tone. “Are you ready to come off the bench?”

The lawyer’s grounded attitude and calm purpose had always been some of his best qualities, but it also meant she had to endure his sarcasm even when she wasn’t in the mood.

“Depends,” she told him as she shoved the blankets off and slid to the edge of the bed. Despite their attempts to clean up the feathers from their middle of the night pillow war, there were little bits of them fluttering still. “What have you got for me?”

“I’ve got three, actually,” he said, and he sounded pleased. “I know you told me you needed a break, but we’re running low on funds so I vetted these as our best returns for more straightforward work.”

“I’m listening,” she murmured, forcing herself to stand. Combing the hair away from her face, she padded out of James’ room…Steve’s bedroom door had closed, so he’d probably gone in there and she didn’t see James anywhere. Diverting toward the kitchen, she ignored the remains of their meal, and the scattered containers.

Coffee was her priority at the moment.

“First up, Frédéric Forestier, the curator at a museum in Toronto needs a middleman to handle the payment of a ransom and the retrieval of several valuable paintings.” She hadn’t heard of any expensive art heists, but she also hadn’t been paying as much attention. That was on her. “We worked with him a couple of years ago, he brought us in to vet the collector trying to sell them a series of lost Degas.”

“The dancers.” She murmured, leaning against the counter. That had been a fun job, even if the subject material had been a little to on the nose for her at the time. It had been a way to generate some much-needed capital and to stay out of the limelight.

“Exactly. They haven’t advertised this heist; several pieces were taken from their restoration laboratories. The thieves are ransoming them back for about forty million dollars.” Not chump change. “And the museum and its benefactors are willing to pay it, but they want some assurances…”

“Enough they want to hire me?” That sounded sketchy.

“Believe it or not, not everyone thinks you’re the bad guy. Our take on this would be a ten percent commission of the overall value of the paintings plus expenses. That’s a little over ten million, which would make your accounts nice and flush again. If you can get the art without paying the ransom, they would appreciate it, but they want their art back too much to worry about the money.”

Sometimes simple and straightforward were exactly that, and sometimes it was just a trap waiting to close. “Did you do the standard background checks?” Despite the fact that Isaiah vetted everything before he brought it to her, he’d worked with this client before. They didn’t have the freedom—she snorted—to be lazy or complacent.

The coffee had filled the pot and the scent wrapped around her like a lover’s embrace. God when was the last time coffee smelled that good? She poured herself a large mug as Isaiah assured her in no small sarcastic way that he knew how to do his job, thank you very much.

He assured her stiffly that he had indeed, vetted it and found all the information credible. “Fine, what’s number two?”

“Human trafficking ring working the border from Arizona to Texas.” That had her interest. “I checked with my contacts at the FBI, this one is legit and they’ve had their behavioral analysis unit on it and aren’t getting far. They have solid ideas, but not enough legal cause…”

“Beaumont?” The agent in question was an old contact, she’d met him before she came to work for SHIELD when he’d been just a rookie cop in Los Angeles and in the wrong place at very much the wrong time. She’d gotten him out, and he’d never forgotten her. They’d actually worked a couple of incidences when she’d been with SHIELD.

“Yes. He needs you to go in and get them actionable evidence and if you happen to shut it all down and leave them to mop it up, he has no problems with that. I know this is work you prefer, but it’s also a hell of a lot less money.” Sometimes the money wasn’t important. “He has access to a spec ops fund, but it would also take us time to clean that.”

“Yeah, I don’t care. Third one—hang on a minute…” She took a long swallow of coffee and pivoted as James stalked out of her room, his phone in hand and a grumpy look on his face. His eyes looked as bloodshot as hers felt. He bumped her out of the way of the coffee maker, then snagged her back for a quick, apologetic kiss before letting her go.

Keeping the phone to her ear, she navigated another pile of murdered pillow remains, and nudged her bedroom door open. Two super soldiers with super hearing made some conversations _super_ fun to have.

“Go ahead,” she told Isaiah after she closed the door. Another swallow of coffee poured more fuel into her system.

“This last one is a little weird, but it all checks out. You know who Antonio Guerda is?”

“Arms dealer, used to be associated with Klaue,” she murmured, ignoring the shiver of apprehension. The last time she’d been anywhere near Klaue she’d had her first encounter with Wanda’s power. Not a memory she cherished to be honest, even if she’d begun the process of breaking loose long lost memories. “Had a small side operation, then went out on his own full time a couple of years ago. Not a nice guy, but I suppose not a real villain either.”

Which was kind of the sad truth about lot of people in these unsavory positions. They weren’t monsters, just people trying to get by and sometimes they did bad things to get there. Didn’t make her a fan though, sometimes it was the most benign that caused the most harm.

An image of Ivan flooded her mind, and the way he would smile when he was proud of her. He’d seemed pretty damn benign, too.

“Anyway, what about him?” Every swallow of coffee brought her closer to human. It was late morning—almost noon. Seven hours of sleep.

Better than she’d managed in a while.

“His son was taken a week ago. There was no ransom demand and no contact from the kidnappers until twenty-four hours ago.” Something was off in Isaiah’s tone. He was always perfectly professional, and adept at pulling apart the tangled threads of information to get to the meat of an issue. A kidnapping was far more critical and time intensive than the first two, but he’d brought it up last for a reason. “The kidnappers won’t deal with him directly. Guerda wants you to negotiate his son’s release, handle all the transactions, he’s empowering you to pay whatever fee is necessary to gain his son’s safety.”

Not her typical job, but also not unheard of.

“And the catch?” Because there was always a catch.

“He’s not offering to pay you in funds, but information.” Isaiah was not a bad man, but he was in charge of keeping her books and her finances clean and clear so no one could take her money if they came after her. A job that didn’t pay was still a job that didn’t pay.

“What information?”

“All he would say is William Burnside. The Watchdogs.”

Natasha sat down on the end of the bed abruptly. “You’re sure that’s exactly what he said?”

“Yep. That’s it, wouldn’t give me more details. Just said to tell you those names.”

“How old is his son?”

Isaiah sighed. Yes, he did seem to understand her. Useful, if irritating at times. “Seven.”

Not even a question. “We’re going to take all three.” Guerda’s kid was an innocent. Whether he was lying out of his ass about the info or not, she wasn’t leaving his kid out there. “Get me all the details, I’ll figure out which one I’m heading to first. I’ll set up three burners—one for each job, and get you the numbers today. Email me everything.”

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that. Are you good for traveling money or do I need to free some up for you?”

She had a little under ten thousand still in the account, she hadn’t needed to spend a dime since she’d arrived at the Tower. Though she would be buying pillows today. “I’m fine. I’ve got transpo covered.” She had clean passports in a safe house in Queens. “Just get me the info, and I’ll take it from there.”

“You got it. Expect to hear from me by the end of the day.”

Done, she ended the call and drained her coffee. Her pulse beat a little faster, and her mind whirled as she made a list of everything she would need. Setting the empty cup aside, she glanced at the door as Steve leaned in. “Hi,” he said slowly. “I was kind of hoping you’d still be in bed…”

“Sorry,” she murmured, holding up the phone. “Apparently, we’re all popular today.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Brunch? Lunch? Food?” The glint of hope in his eyes warmed and admonished her at the same time. She hadn’t forgotten precisely, but she had been distracted.

“Let me shower and I’ll be right out…”

“Great,” he said and started to step out as she rose.

“Rogers?”

He popped his head back in and she sauntered over, rose up on her tip toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. His hand slid down to her hip. It wasn’t a long kiss, morning breath did not encourage that, but it was a sweet one and he let her lean on him as she flattened her hand against his chest. “Morning.”

His smile grew. “Morning. You feel better?”

After a considering moment, she nodded. “Actually, yeah I do.” Then she grinned. She really did. The jobs Isaiah found were perfect for her, and she could contribute. Anticipation threaded through her. “I slept great last night—this morning. Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome, anytime you want to launch a pillow war, I’m your guy.”

“No he’s not,” James called from the kitchen, some of the grump having bled out of his tone. “He’s the guy who takes the front door. What you need is the stealth guy, the one they don’t see coming.”

Natasha laughed. “Not sure that worked out for you so well last night, James. Pretty sure he had you on the ropes from the first move.” Then stole another kiss from Steve before easing back a step. “Gimme fifteen?”

“Take as long as you need,” he assured her. “Omelet? Pancakes? Grilled cheese? Anything you’re in the mood for?”

She laughed. “Surprise me…and yes, Steve. I’ll eat. I promise.”

His eyes lit up and she wandered into her bathroom. It took her less than fifteen to shower, then blow-dry her hair. She straightened it with the brush as much as she could, she could flatiron it after food. Instead of her work out clothes, she pulled out a simple green sundress and slid it on. They’d made a date out of asking her to eat, so she could spend a little effort for them.

Instead of shoes, she left it to bare feet but secured the thigh sheath for her knife. It took her a couple more minutes of picking feathers off her clothes before she closed the closet. She was going to be cleaning that stuff up for months.

Totally worth it.

The scent of French toast, eggs, bacon—good grief the sheer amount of bacon the plate—and more coffee lured her right out.

“Just keep it simple, don’t make it a battle plan,” James was saying. “We’re just talking.”

“But…” Whatever else Steve was going to add, he swallowed when he spotted her and his grin grew. “Wow.”

James twisted to look away from the french toast he was flipping to grin wider. “Damn doll, you should have mentioned. We’re under dressed.”

They looked fine. James had found a pair of jeans, and a dark blue t-shirt, but like her he was barefoot. Steve had gone for a gray shirt and sweats. He was dressed for running, and had on socks, but no shoes. They were both pretty damn fine as far as she was concerned.

“I don’t know. I think you’re both making it work for you.” She headed for the coffee, but detoured long enough to give Mr. Grumpy a kiss good morning. “Feeling more human now?”

“I’m getting there,” he said with a wink. He shooed her away, and she got another kiss from Steve before he refilled her mug for her. “Steve said you’re feeling better?”

Damage control. She’d freaked them out. “Yep, apparently I really needed the sleep and a pair of six foot plus teddy bears.”

Steve snorted, then shook his head but the laughter in his eyes satisfied her. James gave her a measuring look as he loaded the french toast onto plates. Undeterred, she merely raised her eyebrows at him and waited him out. His little sigh said he wasn’t wholly convinced, but he wouldn’t push it.

Good, she wanted to enjoy the buoy to her mood. When she would have settled at the island, Steve motioned her to the other corner. Oh. They’d set the table. There were even flowers. When had they had time to go and get those?

Following Steve over to the table, she let him pull out her chair and she chuckled as she settled and cradled her coffee. “You two did some planning,” was all she said.

“All Steve,” James announced.

The man in question flushed a little as he skated his thumb between her shoulder blades. “Just thought we’d have something nicer than sitting on the counter or eating out of a container.” The hopeful note tugged at her.

“It’s really nice,” she assured him. Red, orange, yellow, peach, and white chrysanthemums in a heavy crystal vase were a nice touch. Their earthy, herbal scent not remotely overpowering. “Did you know flowers have meaning?”

The comment earned her twin, worried stares.

Steve had returned to the kitchen and helped James with the plates and grabbing a jug of orange juice before they carried it toward her.

“Do they?” Steve asked, his brows gathering together. He set the plate in front of her, then filled her glass with orange juice before filling James’ and his.

James eyed the flowers. “They used to mean you might get a kiss from a pretty girl, don’t tell me this century has warped that.”

Natasha didn’t laugh, though she wanted to at the truly concerned looks they exchanged. “No, I’m sure there are a lot of pretty girls out there who would trade you a kiss for a flower.”

Steve didn’t try to hide his snicker as James met her stare with a blunt one of his own and propped one of his feet against the rungs of her chair. “I’m pretty sure you’re not on that list, so not interested.”

“Oh, so if I was on a _list_ of women willing to do that, you’d be more interested in them?” He’d really just walked right into that one.

“After I culled the list to one name.” James didn’t miss a beat.

Chuckling, Steve extended his legs beneath the table until they brushed hers, then nudged her legs up a little until she settled her feet on his shins. These two were huge, she couldn’t stretch her legs that far no matter how flexible she was—it was enough to make her sigh, but she kept her expression neutral.

“Well, you could always cull it by the choice of flower you give.” She nibbled a piece of bacon and turned her attention to the gorgeously colored blooms, it was like they’d found a sunrise and added a little light with the white blooms amidst the rest.

“Huh,” Steve said as he kept slipping her looks as if trying to judge whether the flowers were saying something he didn’t want them to. “I can’t say that ever occurred to me.”

“It’s probably old-fashioned.”

That got them. They both sat up a little straighter.

Oh this was too much fun.

“Really?” James glared at the flowers like they’d done him some offense. “How old fashioned?” Because they were the guys to know, weren’t they?

“Is it a Russian thing?” Steve probed shooting a quelling look at James as if this was somehow his fault.

“Well they have meaning there, too,” she assured him and took a bite of the french toast. It was perfect, and had just the right amount of cinnamon. After making a noise of appreciation, she washed it down with some coffee. “Lila’s got a school thing coming up—Clint’s daughter,” she tacked on in case James didn’t know who she was talking about. “She’s going to dress up like a daffodil or a lilac, I told her we had daffodils on a hill around the…Red Room, the facility where I was at for several years. They were really pretty. And probably the most appropriate flower since they represent unrequited love. But I always liked them.”

James scowled fiercely at the flowers as if they’d done some great offense. “What do these mean?”

Now she felt just a little bit mean because she wanted to laugh so badly, but…she had started it. “Well it depends on where you are…but in Russia, chrysanthemums mean you are a wonderful friend.”

Steve’s shoulders dropped as if he’d been braced for the worst. “That’s not so bad.”

“Yeah,” James said carefully, chewing the idea with another bite. Then he gave her a measuring look. “But we’re not in Russia.”

Sometimes it really made her happy when he spotted the trap before it could close.

“This is true,” she agreed. “In Asia, they signify life and rebirth.” Which was even more appropriate for both he and Steve.

With a smile, Steve leaned back in his chair. “That’s good. I like that.”

“In Europe, they’re an expression of sympathy,” she added, which they both deserved because she was drawing out this torture. And as if he’d realized it at the same time, Steve gave her _the look_.

Yes, Captain America did not approve of her methods.

Biting back a smile, she pointed a piece of bacon at him. “Here they mean respect and honor…” And because she wanted to let them off the hook, she conceded and gestured to each different color. “In general, they represent happiness, love, longevity and joy. So they really are wonderful, thank you.”

She edited out the fact the yellow suggested neglected love or sorrow.

They’d had enough of that in spades.

“You really are mean,” James told her flatly, his eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” she agreed with him. “I am.”

Steve’s leg gave a little jerk below hers and James wrenched his attention off her to him. Uh oh, James’ turn to get the look.

“Sorry,” she murmured, and tried to look chastised even if she was grinning.

“No you’re not,” Steve said, laughing. “You had way too much fun doing that to us.”

“Well, yes. And no one’s ever really brought me flowers before…and I wasn’t sure if you knew what it meant or if you just wanted to get them because they were pretty—then it was fun. But thank you, I like them very much.”

When he rolled his eyes and laughed, she relaxed. “You’re welcome. Are there meanings to all gifts? Because I’m not sure I have time to do that kind of research.”

With a little shrug, she returned to her food. “Sometimes a gift is just a gift.” Even if she wasn’t used to receiving something as frivolous as flowers. It was nice.

Though they all settled in to eat, she wasn’t oblivious to the looks James and Steve exchanged. They were up to something. Still the food was good, and it was nice to just be there and not rushing off even if they’d all been dragged out of bed by different phone calls—not that any of them had brought them up.

“Want some more?” Steve asked and she glanced at the plate, she’d actually eaten all of it. And instead of sitting like a lead weight, she’d was pleasantly full.

“No, thank you. You two can fight it out for the rest of the bacon.” It was like they only needed her to say that before they were both up and in the kitchen. Hiding a smile, she sipped her coffee. The dynamic between those two endured minute shifts, yet it improved. At least from her point of view. She had no idea what they’d been like before—she hadn’t had the luxury of knowing them then, but if she measured it by Steve’s response, she’d have to say they were getting closer to then.

Studying James, she considered the distinct metamorphosis he’d undergone since arriving at the chalet in Switzerland. The man pushing and wrestling with his best friend in the kitchen seemed a little more at peace with himself. The Soldier was still there, she caught him staring out at her now and then, but if she had to guess—she’d say they were blending more and more. Every day there were little improvements, accomplishments. Yes, he had slips, but he also had leaps forward.

Like the evening with the generals.

Then there were the days when he was all Bucky Barnes, and she got a taste of what he might have been like back then. Those days delighted her in their way, particularly when they drew Steve out of his reserve. It had never occurred to her that Steve played a role as much as she and James had, only Steve chose that role. He set himself into that place, and he wanted to live up to those expectations.

When he relaxed though, when he was just Steve… that was the better. She worried about him. Being back, being Captain America again with all the demands on him, she didn’t want him to lose sight of Steve. When James hip checked Steve and escaped with over half the platter of bacon, she laughed.

“You do realize, we can make more, right?”

But they both shot her the most masculine looks of scorn. “That’s not the point, doll,” James argued.

“No, it isn’t,” Steve agreed with him in perfect solidarity, just before he stole two pieces off James’ plate.

Still chuckling, she hid her smile behind her coffee. Once they were back at the table again, she couldn’t miss the StarkPad Steve set down next to his plate. He’d snagged it just before they’d finally divvied up the bacon. She didn’t comment, they’d work themselves around to it eventually.

“Clint doing okay?” Steve asked, before draining his orange juice. She nudged her own over to him because she was content with her coffee.

“As far as I know. He hates the PT and is convinced Helen Cho is working undercover for some brutal underground organization, he just doesn’t know which one yet. He’ll let me know when he figures it out.” Clint hated being stuck at the Compound. But they had everything he needed there, and it was more remote.

“Oh, sounded like you were a little worried,” Steve pressed forward, probing a little.

“I wasn’t talking to Clint on the phone. If you want to know who I was talking to, you can ask.” Trust took time. She trusted them, she did. Steve said he trusted her—but sometimes—sometimes it didn’t always feel like it.

He grimaced. “Not trying to poke at you. I was just…I was curious. Not many people have your number.”

No. Just five people, at the moment. At least to the phone she’d been using. Two of whom were sitting in the room with her. Though he didn’t ask the question, she said, “It was Isaiah.”

She’d never really explained him to Steve, but James’ expression shuttered. He knew the name, because he’d listened to her conversation in Switzerland. “Your attorney.”

“Yes, he handles my finances, and yes—before you ask, we were just talking business.” Because if she brought up her plans at the moment, their brunch would turn into an argument, and she didn’t want that. “So, your turn—who called you?” See, she could ask.

“Wanda,” Steve admitted, tapping two fingers against the StarkPad. Whatever he and James wanted to talk to her about was on that device. “She wanted to see how it was going. She’s spoken to Clint a few times, seems happy with what he’s been telling her. I think she’s starting to lean on coming back.” There was an unspoken but hanging off the end of that sentence.

“But she doesn’t want to leave the work she’s doing in Sokovia? The anonymity?” It was a guess. Wanda had a lot of hard knocks in her life, if she managed to carve out some happiness for herself—maybe they should leave her to it.

Steve grimaced. “Yes and no. She’s more concerned about who will be on the team. Or maybe I should say who isn’t.” Then he looked right at her, and Nat sucked her upper lip between her teeth and shook her head.

“You have to tell her that she can’t make her decisions based on other people. She has to make them for herself. If she wants this, then she should go for it. But if she doesn’t—she shouldn’t try to talk herself into it because it’s what you or Clint want for her. It’s easy to become something for someone else, because you can tell yourself it’s the _right_ thing to do. She’s a kid, she’s lost a lot, but she needs to _want_ this or she’ll never master the control she needs to be safe in the field.” And Natasha wouldn’t back down from the stance not one inch.

With a slow nod, Steve quirked a half-smile at her. “She’s worried because she doesn’t know where you are. Clint keeps telling her you can take care of yourself, but the news has her on edge. Which I am pretty sure translates into she misses you.”

Natasha swallowed the quip on the edge of her tongue. As problematic as Wanda could be, Natasha missed her too. “She’ll be fine. Just let it be her choice.” Because she couldn’t give her anything else. Not while she was safely stored in the Tower, the Avengers’ dirty little secret.

“Maybe it’s better she stays away then,” James said slowly. “Be easier for her than feeling like everyone’s staring at her and she doesn’t have Natalia there to run interference.”

“Clint…” Steve began.

“…is tied up trying to heal, and he’s got a family coming.” The reminder sent a jolt through Natasha, but she contained it. “Not sure we should ask him to be responsible for her, I mean she seemed like a nice enough girl when she wasn’t throwing Natalia into things.”

“She’s a kid, James. She makes mistakes. We’re lucky she’s going to have a chance to learn from them, but Clint will want to look after her regardless.” He felt responsible for her, and had since Pietro died. Natasha hadn’t tried to talk him down from the position, because she understood it. He _needed_ to make it right. “So leave it up to them. That’s pretty much all we can do.” Steve nodded, whether he agreed or not, he seemed to accept the plan.

She should call Clint later. He’d been conspicuously quiet the last couple of days, which meant he was either in a mood or up to something he shouldn’t be.

Maybe both.

Rising, empty plate and coffee cup in hand, she said, “I’m getting more coffee. Do you guys want any?”

“I do,” James said, but he pushed back his chair and reached for her dishes. “I’ll do it.”

And now James was avoiding. “Who was on the phone James?”

Steve finally took her orange juice glass and watched his best friend when the other man shrugged.

“Just Sam.” Two words. Discussion over.

Nat frowned, and raised a brow at Steve, but he shook his head. “Sam’s still in DC, right?” Steve asked.

“Yeah, he wants to come up later today and pick me up—or just have me go down. But…I’m good.” James returned to the table with the refilled mugs.

“Why does he want you back in DC?”

His shrug wasn’t an answer. But, she wouldn’t press him now. Tipping her head to the side, she said, “Well, if you need something, let us know?”

A smile flashed across his face, there and gone. “I’ve got what I need right here...now let’s get on with this Punk.” He nodded to Steve and returned to leaning into the conversation instead of disengaging.

He was allowed his secrets.

They all were.

“Yeah yeah,” Steve muttered, then gave her a sheepish look. “Bucky and I have been talking.”

So she’d noticed, but she kept the thought to herself and just waited him out. Steve stacked the plates to the side and turned on the screen for the StarkPad, then tabbed to some pictures before passing it over.

“I’ve been looking for a place in Brooklyn. Nostalgic, maybe, but if we want to stay in New York, I’d rather there or maybe Queens. But Brooklyn is my first choice. What do you think?”

She took the tablet and looked at the first picture. It was a nice looking single family attached, with some kind of shop on the lower level.

“Now I know what you’re thinking, but the business is empty and it would make a great studio—we could split it in half, put in a dance studio for you, and a artist’s studio for me. Or work it out, then we have all this room on the upper levels. It keeps the living area off the ground floor, which is better for security.”

Reaching over, he swiped to the next one. “Now this one might be better, it’s a little more isolated, single family detached and it has about an acre around it, so good distances. Buck’s not sure about all the trees, but I think they limit line of sight, so that would be good right? Give it more privacy? There’s four bedrooms here, a huge open, converted attic—same thing we could turn it into whatever we needed.” Excitement began to churn in his tone.

The next three houses he wanted to show her all had their pros and their cons. Most of the cons were the same, they were difficult to secure, lots of windows, and the more isolated they were, the more exposed.

“The last one is a long shot, it’s actually north of the city, about halfway between here and the compound, but…but…” Steve held up a hand as if forestalling an argument she had yet to offer on any of this. “It’s on a lake, has more land, a private drive, and it’s not as big as the others, but we can build an addition or a separate structure all together, add a gym, a dance studio—maybe even a firing range.” With an exhale as though he’d made it, he asked, “What do you think?”

James had remained exceptionally silent through the whole presentation and she glanced at him. The unreadable expression on his face offered her no insight into his thoughts on this.

“Nat?” Steve pulled her attention to him. “There’s more pictures of the inside, so whichever ones you want to get a better look at, we can see them right now.”

“The first rule of a safe house is to not let it be so isolated, it makes it easier to target.” Why were they looking at houses?

“It’s not for a safe house—well ideally it will be a _safe_ house, but more so it’s safe for all of us.”

She glanced back at the screen. “You’re house hunting? Not planning to live at the Tower or the compound?”

“Well,” Steve said slowly as he straightened. “No, I think…I think it would be better for all of us to have somewhere…somewhere quieter just for us. The Tower, the compound—they worked for the team, but…I want something more for us.”

She set the pad down. “I’m not moving into a house,” she told him, and stood. “Not now. And certainly not one of those.” Stacking the dishes, she shook her head again. “Steve, the minute you buy a house, it gets filed with the city or the county, these are open records that anyone can look up or hack. Steve Rogers bought a house? Fantastic, let’s overnight the explosive device. No more Steve Rogers.”

Then she glared at James.

“And you let him do this, I thought you’d know better.”

She made it halfway to the kitchen before James’ sigh reached her. “We could easily buy it under a cover name. Then there are no links to any of us.”

“We thought of that.” Steve had followed her with his own stack.

Turning on the water, she set it to filling the sink with warm soapy water and scraped off the debris on the plates before setting them into it.

“Clint told me how you always purchase your places through intermediaries. You have no contact with any of the sellers, no one ever knows it’s you. Reduces the records, then you sell it again, and a third time, so you wipe out any path, and we can do that here. This won’t be like DC where we move into a heavily monitored place.”

“That was Fury’s idea and it was a bad one,” she told him. “For what it’s worth, I disabled everything in that place outside of your living room. If I’d done that, they would have known and sent someone in.”

Surprise danced across his face. “I didn’t know…”

“You weren’t supposed to,” she told him. “Nick wanted me to handle you, and I didn’t like some of his methods, so I handled them.” She hadn’t wanted to handle Rogers, either, but better her than someone else.

James still sat at the kitchen table, she could practically feel the weight of his regard.

“Let’s say for the sake of it, that we can guarantee no one can trace the place to us. Aren’t you even a little bit interested?” The quiet hint of a plea in Steve’s voice dug at her to answer.

“Why do you want to buy a house?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Because…We're not just Captain America and Black Widow. Not just an Avengers. When we’re here–that’s who we have to be. We’re right in the middle of everything.”

She didn't correct him. She wasn't an Avenger anymore. Then he hesitated, but she waited as she worked her way through washing the dishes. He took over rinsing them as she steadily cleaned everything.

“Because the team is coming back together. It’s going to change things, they’re going to want to do stuff like movie night, and everyone gathering in the common room for breakfast. If we live there, they’re going to expect to see me…”

And they couldn’t see her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny.

“…you know how it is Nat, and I don’t want to be us for just a couple of hours here and there where we can steal them. I want a place, where you two are safe, where I can be there and not worry about someone barging in or needing something so they take the stairs. Where I’m not two minutes away.” Then he paused, and turned. “Are you going to help me out on this?”

“No,” James said slowly. “You’re doing fine.”

“Do you not like the idea?” It was her turn to ask. Because why a house? Why—it was so…permanent. Yet they weren’t, not really. How many safe houses had she had over the years? Those came and went. She’d had to give up plenty after SHIELD. Some of her nicer ones, too.

“I don’t hate it,” James hedged his bets.

“But you liked those places,” Steve argued with him. “Or at least that’s what you told _me_.” There was a warning in that statement.

“And I do like some of them. They’re nice. Nicer than anything we could have afforded when we were kids and for what they want for them, they better be nice.” James didn’t miss a beat. “But like I said, I don’t hate the idea. I don’t love it either. A place is a place. We could have stayed in Switzerland for all I cared.”

As long as he was with them, he didn’t care where they lived. So, that was healthy enough, she supposed. It wasn’t unreasonable, so why didn’t she like it?

When she’d washed the last pan and handed it off to Steve, she began to empty the sink. James finally joined them, and started drying the dishes with a hand towel. It was a little odd, she never minded doing the dishes. She’d not grown up with a dishwasher, and that had been one of her assignments once upon a time as a domestic in a household. Still, the fact neither James nor Steve seemed inclined to use the device wasn’t lost on her either.

“Then it can’t hurt to look, right?” Steve really wanted this.

“Fine,” she told him. “Pick out the one you like best.”

His groan halted her before she made it two steps, and she folded her arms as she faced them.

“Nat, the point is to find a place for us. For all three of us. Not just what makes me happy or you or Bucky. But a place where _we_ can be happy.”

“I don’t need a place for that.” No such place existed. They were buildings. They could be toppled with a bulldozer or burned by fire. A happy place was a damn myth. “The reality is whatever place you pick might not end up being somewhere I get to stay for long. So how I feel about it shouldn’t be a factor.”

He stared at her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Captain Rogers, that I’m still a fugitive. That _isn’t_ going away. You’re a very public figure, we’re trying to attach that same nostalgia and value to Sergeant Barnes with the help of the military so he has the same protection you do. They aren’t going to do that for me. Even if Tony can miraculously buy me a pardon—and I don’t even think he has that much money—I’m never going to be the woman behind the white picket fence. I’m always going to have to have a bag packed and ready to roll in the middle of the night.”

Whatever they were doing, whatever they had between them, he had to understand that. The pained look on his face cut her. James had stopped drying, but he wasn’t looking at her thankfully. She wasn’t sure she could handle the pair of pained looks.

“So that’s it, you’ve made up your mind that’s all your future is going to be?” Disbelief punched up the anger in his tone a notch. Or maybe it was just disappointment.

“I don’t have a future,” she reminded him. “I have today. I have what I do right now. Right now, I’m here. This is where I chose to be. Can’t that be enough?” The last four words slipped out.

He stared at her, and the longer he did the more her back straightened. Hurting him was not her goal, but he wanted this—bright shiny optimistic thing and it was beautiful.

But it wasn’t her.

“I guess it will have to be.” Steve shut off the water and walked away. “I’m going for a run.”

She tracked him as he disappeared into his bedroom, and she hated herself a little.

“I’ll talk to him,” James told her, as he brushed past to follow.

“You understand, right?” Why did she ask that?

James glanced at her. “I get what you’re saying. Do you?” But he didn’t wait for her answer as he pushed open the door to Steve’s room and went in after him.

Planting her hands on the counter, she bowed her head. Dammit. Houses.

They wanted to have breakfast with her to look at houses so they could plan something for the next few years. What the hell were they thinking?

What the hell was she thinking?

A chime sounded overhead, just as the elevator dinged. The doors opened and Tony stood there with a hand comically placed over his eyes as he peeked out through middle and ring fingers. “You all better not be naked—I don’t want to see your junk. Unless it’s you Red, then that’s okay.”

“Good morning, Tony,” she said drily. “I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with clothed.”

“Damn,” he said good-naturedly wearing a grin as he strolled out. He swept a look around the living room, and paused at the sofa to pick up a feather. “Do I want to know?”

She didn’t give him an answer, but simply raised her eyebrows. “What can I do for you? Or should I say we?”

“You, you’re fine. Where are the super twins?” He glanced around as he continued on his way to the kitchen.

“Steve’s getting ready for a run.” And James was talking to him after she’d managed to tick off and hurt Steve, but Tony didn’t need to know that part. “More research on Roxxon? I haven’t really had a chance to look for anymore than I had yesterday. I did put Steve’s uniform in decon, and run whatever the residue on his suit was through the system so Friday could break it down.”

“She did…interesting bioorganic in it, not complex, but definitely not just crude. We’re still examining it. That’s not why I’m here either,” he continued, walking his fingers along the counter before clapping his hands and snapping his fingers in some kind of restless rhythm. “Good idea on running it, should have thought of that yesterday but I was a little busy trying to bring the Manchurian Candidate back to the land of freedom and apple pie.”

“And apparently being exceptionally humble about it.”

“You’re welcome. What’s the point of being me if I can’t do something like that, right?” He smirked, then chuckled. “Anyway, no, not about Roxxon, but definitely about you. I need a favor.”

Folding her arms, she waited. “What favor would that be? I can’t sweet talk any senators or generals for you. And I’m definitely not booking you any tables for dinners you show up ninety minutes late for.”

He laughed. “I only did that twice, and that wasn’t for the ones I asked you for, but the ones Pepper said I had to be at. Though, I could use an assistant. You could do the whole boss of me routine, and keep me in line.”

At her dry look, he waved it off and his laugh went up a quarter beat, strangling at the end of it and he hadn’t stopped moving.

“What’s wrong Tony?”

He was nervous as hell about something.

“It’s not wrong per se, but it’s not right yet either and I think you’re the perfect person to fix it, but it would mean letting someone not in the know, know, and I kind of already made arrangements, but then I got to thinking it might be better to run it past you before I sprang it on you—because I didn’t want you to break my nose.”

“Tony,” she said slowly, hoping he’d take a breath and he did. “What did you do?”

Behind him, the door to Steve’s room opened and both he and James were staring at Tony in question.

“You remember Spider-Man? Little guy, about yay high, red and blue underoos?”

“Vaguely,” she told him drily. “I believe he hacked the suit you made him and then helped get a ferry cut in half.”

“That’s the one,” Tony said, with a proud grin like he was pleased she got it right.

“What did he do now?”

“Nothing,” Tony assured her. “Yet. But it’s what he’s _going_ to do, that I need your help with.”

“I’m listening.”

She kept her attention on Tony, but didn’t miss the frown on Steve’s face or the cool blankness rippling over James’. Tony’s behavior worried them, too.

“See, I took the suit away from him because he wasn’t listening, and behaving in an impulsive manner. Reckless even.” He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t say it, you met me at my worst, and I think I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, you were thinking it and getting ready to hit me with the spy whammy. I know I am absolutely the worst poster child for responsibility and restraint—but this isn’t about me.”

That almost made her smile—Tony Stark in restraints, maybe. But he wouldn’t be Tony if he were any other way.

“But the kid, he was doing this _before_ I gave him the suit. He’s strong. He’s fast. He can climb walls. I don’t think we’ve maxed out what he _can_ do yet. The suit offered him a lot of safeguards, and there was an AI in there to back him up. Without it, it’s just him and his considerable abilities.”

If he danced much harder, he was going to win a Tony Award for the most Tony.

“Tony,” she said firmly. “What do you want me to do about the kid?”

“I want you to train him.”

Oh.

She blinked. “Why?”

“Because…you’re you.” He motioned to her. “You trained Cap. You trained baby agents. You used to train the other Avengers. You know restraint and discipline. The fact that the kid might be stronger or faster than you isn’t going to stop you because trust me, you are way meaner. Just be careful, because kicking him is like kicking a puppy. He has these eyes that just make you feel like you sold your soul—and again that won’t be a problem for you. You can spy whammy him.” He was so proud of himself as all the words spilled out.

“Thanks,” she deadpanned. Yet underneath all of his bluster and smart-ass was a deep, deep concern and fear. “The kid’s still running patrols, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Tony said with a long exhale. “He actually sent me an email, to tell me that he planned to keep doing it even without the suit cause he’d done it before. Look, Red, I know things are sideways right now, and we want to limit who knows you’re here—that was even my idea which means it was a good idea.”

“It was Steve who suggested it,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but I ran with it, talked you into it…”

“No, I talked myself into it.”

“I’m keeping you off the grid and gave you a place to stay.”

“That part is true. Get back to the kid, Tony.” Because Steve was about ready to pop a blood vessel and only the fact that James had a hand on his shoulder was keeping him still.

“I think we can trust the kid for him to know you’re here.”

“You can’t trust him with a suit, and you want to trust him with Nat?” Yep. Steve wasn’t being quiet anymore.

Tony wheeled around. “Hey Cap, didn’t see you there. Hear me out…”

“I heard you,” Steve said through clenched teeth. “I also heard you when you said he wasn’t ready for the Avengers.”

“He’s not,” Tony said spreading his hands. “He’s just not. He’s—he’s got heart, Steve. The kid has got heart for days. He genuinely wants to do the right thing, thinks he has a responsibility. He’s so damn idealistic; he’s going to get shot in the head before he’s eighteen at the rate he’s going. But he needs someone who can get through to him, who he’ll _listen_ to and better, someone who can train someone with powers.”

“Then we introduce him to Clint…”

“Who is on medical and shouldn’t be sparring. The kid needs to learn to fight against someone who could conceivably kill him.”

“Then he can train with the rest of us.” Steve closed his eyes for a minute and sucked in a deep breath. The visible war between his temper and his reason played out on his face. “He’s a kid, then we can train him. You don’t trust him—you just said it. He meets Nat here, he even says it to one person and she’s at risk.”

“He won’t,” Tony said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t _have_ to know it. I know _him_.” Conviction burned in every single one of Tony’s words.

“How?” James asked. “How does knowing him assure you that we can trust him with knowledge about Natalia when we aren’t trusting any of the other Avengers?”

It was a good question, and even Steve nodded, agreeing with her on that one.

“Because the kid wanted to be like me, and in some ways he is a lot like me. He’s—head strong, stubborn, smart as hell…but he’s loyal. And he’s fifteen, and she’s Red.” Looking away from Steve and James, he faced her. “If I had a chance to have someone train me, I don’t know if I could swear I could keep that secret. I’m not real good at them…some but not all. This kid? He’s different. Red—I don’t want him to die. Can you help me out here?”

Oh. This was going to be a problem. “I’ll meet him. Then I can tell you if I can train him.”

Tony beamed. “Fantastic. He’ll be here right after school, I’ll have Friday send him to the training room. It’s going to be great.”

Behind him, Steve just stared at her and James shook his head.

Sure.

It was going to be great.


	7. Spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is Bucky really the well-adjusted one? And Peter Parker gets to meet Natasha Romanoff for real this time.

**Chapter Seven**

**Spider**

**Natasha**

 

 

The argument ended before it could truly begin—an emergency came through forcing Steve and Tony to leave. She was neither relieved nor particularly upset, but she did feel a measure of guilt. Steve was about to go into another fight upset at her just like he had the day before.

Worse, he’d just grabbed his gear and shield then gave her a look before climbing into the elevator. A look. “Be safe,” she told him, and his gaze locked on her for a split second before the doors closed.

The silence stretched across the room. Unfortunately, Tony had also left before he could tell her when the kid was getting there, he just mentioned after school. Standing there feeling guilty wouldn’t accomplish anything, and the restlessness spiraling through her had her heading for her room to change.

Before she did anything, she needed to go burn off some of this energy. Stripping off the dress, she dropped it into the dirty clothes. The whole point had been to be fun and flirty—what an epic fail that had been. Dragging on a sports bra, she pulled out some leggings, and then socks and shoes. If it were darker outside, she’d drop on the photo static veil and go for a run.

Course, she might never come back.

Shaking off the thought, she picked up her phone. James had asked her to let them earn her trust. Steve had asked her to let him in. She was trying…why did it have to be so damn hard?

Could she really miss being on her own when no one gave a damn about where she went or who she met with?

No emails from Isaiah yet. So he was still pinning down the details. She could just call Beaumont, but she was a fugitive and he was FBI. Probably wouldn’t go over well. Lowering the phone, she groaned. If not being interested in a house and telling Tony yes, she would do him a favor upset Steve when he clearly didn’t want her to take a risk—her taking these jobs would likely launch them right into another fight.

That meant she had to lie to him.

Aggravation ripped through her and she flipped the phone to Clint’s contact info, then froze before pressing the call. Clint would listen. He would hear her and then he would tell her she was being an idiot. Of course Steve was protective—it was who he was. If she wanted him to just accept her for who she was, she had to do the same.

But she wasn’t the one telling him to stay here and avoid danger, was she?

No, and it was better if she didn’t bother Clint. He was already fighting with his rehab and Laura and the kids were due any day. She didn’t want him distracted from his family. Frustrated, she clenched the phone and stalked out of the room. She nearly missed James as he pushed off the wall next to her door and followed her to the elevator.

“Going somewhere?”

“Yes, to the gym.” When she stepped inside, he joined her. “Friday, can you lock down the training rooms and gym?”

“Done, Ms. Romanoff. You are secure to travel to that level.”

“Thank you, Friday.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. Romanoff.”

Yep. The only reason she hadn’t had to ask the night before was because the Tower had been empty, but during the day there was a risk for someone else to be on the secure levels whether it was just cleaning staff or maintenance. James said nothing as he rode the elevator with her, falling into step as the doors opened and she headed to the gym.

Shoving the doors open, she studied the open floor space and equipment. Treadmills, speed bags, weights, resistance bands, and a matted floor for sparring. It had a little bit of everything. Tony had sparred no expense. In the beginning, it had been funny to come down and find Steve beating a speed bag, Bruce doing yoga, Thor tossing the weights from hand to hand like they were nothing. Clint would spend time on the resistance equipment or running to keep his lung control up when he wasn’t doing target practice. She alternated between sparring with Steve, and occasionally Thor—she did like to test herself against stronger opponents—and the equipment. Tony though, he’d come in with his coffee and donuts to supervise, saving his own workouts for Happy away from their prying eyes.

Or at least that’s what he used to joke.

Quiet in this room still seemed alien.

“Friday, give me some music would you?”

“Anything specific, Ms. Romanoff?”

“Nope. Hit a workout mix.” She angled over toward the gear bins for tape. She started to wrap her knuckles when James intervened and took over. Eyeing him, she frowned. “What are you doing?”

Daft Punk kicked on, and she smiled. That would work.

“I’m wrapping your hands properly.” The pure patience in his voice was the only thing that kept her from yanking her hand away.

“You do realize this isn’t my first go round, right?”

“You do realize I taught you how to do this properly.” He didn’t so much as glance up. “You would beat your knuckles bloody, they would barely be scabbed by the next day and you would rip them open again.” With every word he tightened the wrap around her right hand, then when he’d secured it, he reached for her left hand and repeated the process. “None of the handlers said a word to you about it, not even when it was your blood staining the bags. Your hands bruised so badly you almost failed a reload in time.”

Finished with the left hand he looked up at her and her breath backed up in her lungs.

“Right now you’re frustrated, and you came down here to get that anxiety out. It’s a good choice. But I would rather you didn’t beat your hands bloody.”

Torn between the curiosity the tale aroused in her and the fact she’d already come over here to wrap her hands, she settled for a different question, “Do you really not care about Steve’s house idea?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t care…I just don’t feel strongly one way or the other.” It was a carefully phrased answer.

Informative without actually giving up any information. Heading for the speed bag, she expected he would follow and he didn’t disappoint.

“How long has he been looking?”

“Since you came back to the Tower.” So at least a week.

They hadn’t discussed what she’d done with Ross. Steve hadn’t brought it up, though he’d stared at her burned hand for long periods of time, he hadn’t asked. Probably because he’d heard the tapes or seen them. James had only helped change the dressing on it for those first couple of days while it healed. They’d both touched her bruised cheek with equal care.

But they never asked about why she’d come or about what she’d done or anything. They’d accepted her being there and it had been…good.

Testing the bag with a couple of blows, she shook her head. She needed to clear some of the noise out. “I need to be better for Steve.” Granted, they were all still exploring this thing between them, but she kept failing him.

“It takes time,” James said as he gripped the bag and braced it.

“You know—you don’t get to be the most well-adjusted one of us,” she told him. “I refuse.”

A half smile quirked his lips. “I’m hardly the most well-adjusted one.”

“Not from where I’m standing.” She warmed up, striking the bag regularly and loosening the muscles in her arms and shoulders.

“Doll…you and Steve worry about five thousand different things. He’s always worried about what’s next, what’s after that, and what happens after that. Thinks if he anticipates everything, he can make sure the bad stuff doesn’t happen.” He eyed her as he spoke. “You’re weaker on the left. Maybe from the burning, and you’re overcorrecting on the right.”

She adjusted, and checked her fist. The muscles hadn’t seemed weaker, but it was still freshly healed and she hadn’t resumed her normal routines—she’d been brooding, running, or spending time with the guys—trapped in the Tower like some ridiculous princess from a fairy tale.

“And as for you, you’re balancing too many things for too many people,” James continued as if he hadn’t paused to give her advice on her form. “You took care of Leonid and Alexei, you took down Ross, then you made the leap to come here…and now you’re asking yourself every day if you did the right thing. But you worry about Steve, you worry about me, you worry about Stark and Clint. After the call this morning, I’m going to say your Isaiah gave you more to worry about.”

“Just business,” she corrected him. “Unless you’re going to tell me why Sam wanted you back in DC.”

He said nothing, and she continued hammering the bag. The flow loosened up muscles in her back, and arms. She was starting to dance on her feet as she hit the bag. It wasn’t quite the same as sparring, but she might dance today. Give her muscles a punishing workout.

It had been weeks since she really danced. She couldn’t afford to let the skill lay fallow.

“The only things I worry about are you and Steve,” James said quietly and she broke off hitting the bag to meet his gaze. “So I’m not well-adjusted. I’m obsessive.”

She actually huffed a laugh. “You’re still getting used to being you—who you can be. You’ve…maybe you don’t realize how far you’ve come in the last three weeks, but I see it. I know Steve does. Do you remember your first morning at the chalet?”

He frowned. “That was the day Ross used that video clip of you in the chair.”

“Yes, but do you remember before that?” She tilted her head to the side, studying him.

“Came down for breakfast…I was hitting on you. Trying to get you to like me.” He made a face. “I was pretty obnoxious—but you were and _are_ gorgeous.”

Ignoring the compliment for now, she smiled. “And before that?”

He shook his head slowly. “It’s a little hazy. It was weird coming out of cryo, it’s always a little hard to focus. They used to get me right into the chair and do the wipe. Gave me some clarity or at least helped me shake off the residual dreams.”

Her stomach turned over.

“But Shuri didn’t do that, I remember—they were making adjustments to the new arm, giving me tests, talking to me—but it’s a blur. Then getting to Steve and I slept in the closet. Better security…no I don’t really remember anything before breakfast, why?”

“You somehow slipped Friday’s watch, climbed over the house itself, landed on my balcony and waited for me inside the room—you were standing there when I came out of the shower.” She studied his eyes and didn’t miss the way they widened. “But I don’t think it was you James…”

“The Soldier.” His fists clenched and his left arm whirred a little. “I didn’t hurt you?” The fear in that question had her stepping right up to him and placing her hands on his chest.

“No. In fact, all you wanted to do was give me the data pad Shuri sent with you that had all your medical records, and readings. You wanted to give me your mission readiness, because I was the Widow.” She watched his eyes carefully, but the recognition didn’t appear. Only worry. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

He shook his head. “No, you should have. I just…I know the Soldier’s still there. I can, I can feel him. Sometimes, mostly when there’s something really wrong, he’s ready to take over. He was the one who got us out of that cell in Russia. You were fighting and we weren’t going to stay out of it.”

With a small smile, she rubbed a circle against his left shoulder, massaging the tight muscle there.

“He scares me, but not like he used to. He doesn’t fight me anymore. It’s not like he’s in charge and I’m sitting in a dark place I can’t get out of because if I open my eyes I see what he has to do.” He swallowed. “I think that’s why some of the memories—they don’t come back. I get images, a little feeling—a name. But the rest, I don’t see it because he did, not me.”

“Well, I get that. A little. But you remember me?” He’d said that.

“I told you, you made me remember what it was to be human. Me and the Soldier. I can tell you he’s even more gone for you than I am. The only reason he ever shot you was because of the orders and the commands he couldn’t disobey and even then, he kept trying to.” The rueful confession was oddly romantic, but then she was a little twisted so it made sense.

“The Widow can be like that, not that I think of her as someone different, but more someone I embody.” Backing away, she rolled her head from side to side.

“Is that why you don’t think you have a future?”

“No…I think I don’t have a future because I’ve never had one.” It seemed a simple answer, but he looked far from satisfied by it. Unwrapping her hands, she moved away from the speed bags and headed for the weights. If her left was weaker, she needed to muscle that back up.

“Natalia, you have a future. You’re here…almost a hundred years from when you were born. _That_ is the future.”

“No, that’s just my present.” She chose the single arm weights and concentrated on alternating biceps curls and triceps presses. “James…in the Red Room, you survived every day. It was the accomplishment. You make it to bedtime without dying in one of the training rooms or on a mission or whatever it was they needed you to do. Then you survived the night without one of the other girls killing you. The sun came up, and your present was that you were still alive.”

He sighed.

“It’s how I live my life. I can’t change yesterday no matter how much I might wish to. That kept me alive. I don’t have tomorrow, that’s not a guarantee. Never has been and never will be. I have right now. It was how I made it in the Red Room, and I know it had to be how I survived after. It kept me alive for fifteen years before I met Clint. Then it helped me survive everything SHIELD put me through before they began to trust me and every other damn thing after. I can’t change it…it just _is_.”

“Have you ever wanted to change it?”

“No,” she told him honestly, continuing the alternating presses. She wouldn’t even know how to, at this point. If she changed it, if she started wanting tomorrow…she had something to lose.

And hadn’t she already lost enough?

He leaned on the equipment, and they were both quiet as though he were only keeping her company while she worked. “At the risk of disturbing our detente. I'm going to give you my concerns about Spider-Punk.”

Spider-Punk? Poor kid. That name was going to stick. “You can say it, doesn’t mean it’s going to change my mind.”

“Fair enough.” He straightened, squared his shoulders and glared at her until she stopped lifting and put the weight down. “I’ve fought him. So has Steve. He’s stronger than I am, Natalia. He caught my arm, when I went to hit him, caught it and turned it out.” He flexed his metal arm. “This one is stronger than the last, but I just have my strength and I couldn’t pull away from him. Steve had to drop a flight gangway on him to slow him down and all he did was hold it up.”

That was pretty damn strong.

“Cap holds back though,” she said. “He even held back with you, at first.”

“Not on the street,” James told her. “Not when I was about to shoot you. Trust me, I remember exactly how hard he hit me. He would have killed me if I’d slipped.” Then he shrugged. “If I’d seen someone about to shoot you, I’d have done the same thing.” For a moment, he trailed off and his eyes got that faraway look again and she let out a breath.

He was remembering.

Then he blinked. “I have. And I think I was hoping he would come, I’d shot you through the shoulder. I didn’t want to shoot you in the head.”

He shook his head again and then raked his fingers through his hair.

“Natalia, you are a fierce fighter. Probably one of the best I’ve ever seen, but if that kid is green and as untrained as I think he is—he may not even realize how strong he is. He could hurt you.”

“Lots of things can hurt me, the point of training someone is to make them aware of their capabilities and to hone their reactions so they don’t make those kinds of mistakes.” Yes, she was oversimplifying it, but James of all people would understand.

“His age is also a factor,” he said carefully. “He’s young, very young. And your experiences with young boys who are stronger than you…”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” she told him firmly, holding up a hand. “This isn’t the Red Room. I’m not some scrawny kid fighting for scraps. I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the difference. You forget I was on comms with that kid during the fight, I get how young he is. But that just makes me want to help him. I don’t want a dead kid on my conscience anymore than Tony does.”

James nodded slowly, then opened his mouth to say something when the music quieted and Friday interrupted. “My apologies, Sergeant Barnes, but Mr. Wilson and Colonel Rhodes are on the flight deck.”

Irritated, he asked, “Why?”

“They have requested that you join them.”

He grumbled. “Tell them they’ll have to wait.”

“I will do my best, Sergeant Barnes but they are both impatient.”

“James, I don’t think they’d be here if it weren’t important.” She ignored the tug in her gut. First Steve, now James again. They both had places to be that she couldn’t follow.

“They just want me to talk to some folks,” he growled. “I don’t want to talk to anymore.”

“If it speeds the pardon, you’ll be done with them soon enough.” And then he could be out with Steve watching his back since Nat couldn’t.

“I don’t want to leave you here to meet Spider-Punk on your own.” Which seemed to be about equal to his desire not to leave period much less meet with anyone.

“We can tell Friday to send them away,” she offered.

“Sam’s made it his mission to get me squared away for Steve.” The dark look gathering in James’ eyes was interesting enough. “He thinks if I have to be around, I might as well be respectable.”

“Sam means well,” Natasha told him, trying very hard not to smile.

“He annoys me.”

“Could it be because he really wants the angle on being Steve’s best friend?” No, she wasn’t smiling at all.

“No,” James said swiftly, too swiftly. “It’s because he’s annoying.”

“Do you really not want to go?” She was supposed to be urging him to take on these challenges. But he had, and he’d done so well. It was a lot to ask of him.

“No.”

“I could tell Friday a lie to give them,” she offered, because this wasn’t her choice to make. “Or you can. You have options.”

“But you don’t approve of it?” He narrowed his eyes, studying her.

“Well as you said earlier, I don’t really approve or disapprove. It’s your choice.” If she could go with him, she’d already be offering her hand. As it was, she could only stand firm and give him an anchor while he made his own call.

“Friday, can you connect me to Sam?”

“Of course, Sergeant Barnes. Please recall that I have a security lock down on this level so it will be voice only.”

“Fine by me.” He folded his arms and looked at her, so she imitated his stance and leaned against the treadmill.

“Barnes, hey man…I know you said you didn’t want to come to DC, so we swung a meeting for you at the compound, but we really need to get over there before they arrive.” Sam’s tone was different. He was much more reasonable and calm with her, sometimes playful and biting. With Cap, he was solicitous, even when he criticized. With James? Natasha considered the words he’d used and the way he’d said it—there was an impatience there, and frustration.

“Why’d you do that?” James didn’t bother to hide the aggression in his voice. “I told you no. It’s not a good idea. You don’t get to make these decisions for me.”

“Someone has to, Cap’s not going to tell you to get off your ass, and if you won’t then it’s up to me to make it happen…”

_That_ was a mistake. Natasha opened her mouth ready to throw all caution to the wind—

“Look, Barnes—Rhodes here,” Rhodey broke in before Sam could make it worse. “The Secretary of Defense was really impressed with you, and he made some calls. He’s gotten some key people on board, but these two generals—they weren’t able to attend last night. One is the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He’s Army, his grandfather served in the 107th—correction, he lead the 107th.”

“Phillips?” Some of the tension bled out of him.

“Yeah,” Rhodey said, and he was far more solicitous than Sam. “Though his name is Ryker, his mother was General Phillips’ daughter. I explained that last night had been a challenge, and that you’re still recovering. They respect the hell out of what it means to be a POW for as long as you were. When they asked for the meet and you didn’t want to come, Sam and I talked about it—we were hoping Steve could be there, but I can if you’ll have me, Sam…”

Natasha met James’ gaze and mouthed one name. His eyes brightened a little and more stiffness eased from his shoulders.

“Barton. If we’re meeting at the compound, I’d like Barton to sit in.”

Rhodey was quiet for a moment. “You know he used to be an Army Ranger, that might work…”

Surprise flickered in James’ eyes, but Natasha hid a smile. James may only truly feel safe with she and Steve, but Clint had a way of getting around the barbed wire.

“Give me fifteen. I need to change.”

“We’ll be here—and thanks Barnes.” The fact that Rhodey thanked him seemed to mean something to James. He dropped his head, the hair falling forward to hide his face.

He took a series of deep, but ragged breaths and she waited him out. His hands had unclenched, and the raw tension cording his muscles had eased. “I liked Phillips,” he said after a moment. Gruff, temperamental bastard more likely to yell at you than give you a compliment—but he was a fucking genius in the field and he trusted his resources. Once he had your back, you knew the whole damn army was coming with you.”

There was a pain under those words, an old one. So she gave him the space to work it out or suppress it. Despite what others liked to say—even Clint—being able to suppress something that raw until you were capable of letting yourself feel it could be better than be swamped under the tidal wave of emotion.

“He never stopped looking for my body…” The soft admission startled her. Genuinely, how did she not know that piece? “Howard Stark, he spent millions and years, looking for Steve. I read that at the museum…it was in this little footnote in one of the pamphlets. Later—Steve told me that was one of the issues between he and Tony. You know Howard really admired Steve, and he was determined to bring his body home.” His mouth twisted. “I didn’t think anyone had looked for me. It was the Alps in the middle of winter, fighting was everywhere. Not that there would have been a body to find.”

When he shuddered, she abandoned distance and just wrapped her arms around him and he all but fell into her. With his chin braced against her head, he locked his arms around her so tight it made it hard to breathe. She didn’t complain.

“Phillips went back—after Zola, after Red Skull, after Steve—he went back. I…I read about him—when I was in Bucharest. There’s a biography.” The confession seemed to take every effort out of him. “It was in a footnote, so I had to look it up. General Phillips brought home every single man he took into combat, save one. Until the year he died, he kept looking for him. Even a trace.”

Her heart twisted. “You.”

James nodded, the movement scraping his chin against her skull. “I’d forgotten until last night. One of the generals…he made a joke about Phillips. It wasn’t a mean one, but—he called me Phillips’ unicorn. And damned if the old bastard hadn’t been right. Then I remembered.”

It was likely his grandson remembered.

“I wasn’t forgotten, Natalia.” That was the part rocking him. She squeezed him, as hard as she could. She lacked the bulk of his strength, but she wanted him to feel her. “They didn’t forget me.” Him. Bucky. “Steve. Phillips. The Commandos. Peggy.” He let out a bark of a laugh. “Steve said Peggy and Howard were in Norway once—looking for me. They’d gotten this lead on a ghost, thought it might be me. Phillips had pneumonia, couldn’t go. So they did. They never found me, obviously…”

Norway.

Everything in her folded.

They hadn’t forgotten him.

But she had.

She’d been made to forget.

Worse—she’d been used to make sure they didn’t find him. Had he been there, in ’52? Or had they kept him safely in cryo while she cleaned up his trail?

If Ivan were in front of her, she’d gut him.

Finally, he let out another shuddering breath. “Still think I’m the well-adjusted one?”

Laughter wheezed out from behind her tears, and she blinked them away. He needed her to be calm, to be grounded, and to anchor him. “Yep,” she said, popping the p just like he did. “Go meet his grandson—let him finish his grandfather’s quest. It will make you both feel better.”

When he loosened his hold, she angled her head to meet his gaze.

“You won’t be alone. Clint will have your back.” It wasn’t even a question. “And whatever you do—just ignore Sam.” Because that was a problem that needed to be fixed.

“I’ll try…” Glancing around the training room for a moment, he seemed to be gathering himself. “You will be careful with Spider-Punk?”

“No.” She wouldn’t lie to him. “I’m going to have to push him to figure him out.”

He sighed, and dropped his forehead to rest against hers. “Avoid bruises zvezda moya. They will just make Steve crazier.”

Let them earn her trust. “Trust me?”

“Da,” he whispered, the kissed her. It wasn’t a passionate kiss or even one demanding desire or response. It was just a simple promise, an acknowledgement, and full of longing.

Wrapping her arms around him again, she whispered, “We’re going to be okay. I’ll make it up to Steve.”

“Natalia?” He squeezed her waist. “Steve needs you to protect him, too. Even if he doesn’t realize it.”

Did he really think she didn’t know that? “I’ve spent years trying to protect him James. Now he’s out there and I’m here.” That was the price she’d had to forfeit to save them in Leipzig, to get rid of Ross, and she’d pay it over and over.

“We will get you back where you need to be.” An interesting turn of phrase. But despite everything she and Steve said, James never indicated he wanted back into the fight. If that was the case, then she would happily keep him out of it—after he had the option and freedom to join if he wished.

“We’ll figure it out…you should go.”

Displeasure creased his face. “The call from your lawyer?”

“Just business, I told you.” Deflection was just second nature.

“Jobs?” But he wasn’t so easy to deflect.

“Girl’s gotta eat,” she kept it flip, but his dubious look dismissed the attempt before it even started. “And you need to go. We can talk about this later.”

The flat gaze nailing her to the floor was all Soldier. “You will not leave without telling us.”

Telling.

Not ask.

Telling.

“Da, Soldat.”

His expression shifted, the minute changes both fascinating and a little unsettling to observe. “Promise me, too?”

“Yes, James. I promise. Though—it’s just going to piss Steve off all over again.”

“He’s a punk, and he might yell—but Stevie only gets angry when he cares.” His frown deepened, even as the Brooklyn in his voice stretched out. “Look, you deflect, defuse, and distract. Stevie broods, seethes, and blows up. Neither of you fight fair, and most of the time, you ain’t even fighting the same battle. I’ll tell you what I told him this morning…”

Maybe he shouldn’t. “Don’t betray him.”

“I’m not. After the house thing, I told him I was going to say the same thing to you. He wants everything, because he’s had to wait so long and he’s been denied for so long. You don’t know how to let yourself want, and you’re already stretching yourself for us right now. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean it’s over, it means we find a way through.”

“And you still don’t think you’re the well-adjusted one?” The deadpan comment made him smile.

“Not even close doll.” Then he turned on his heel and walked out. Tipping her head back, she looked at the ceiling.

“Friday, sitrep on the team?”

“They are five minutes out from the Hellespoint Fairfax, a supertanker flying Belgian flags. It is located about three hundred nautical miles from the port of New York, in the Atlantic. Their course and bearing show them directly heading for the city. Current situation aboard the tanker is hostile, with no response from the captain or crew for more than two hours.”

That was oddly specific.

“Who called the alarm?” Being out of the mission loop sucked.

“The call came directly from the committee, following notification by the Belgian delegate that they’d lost control of the tanker.” There was more to that story.

“Any links to Roxxon?”

“Not at the moment, Ms. Romanoff. The tanker is owned by Helcion Alchemical, also a Belgian based company with leases in several parts of the world for oil drilling.” More oil.

“When you have time could you pull together a full background check on Helcion Alchemical, and the tanker?”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Thanks Friday.”

She kept herself busy and her mind focused on her current situation rather than where she couldn’t be. After stretching, she had Friday crank up the music and she danced. Then she went for her toe shoes. It was going to hurt. She hadn’t been on en pointe in weeks.

An hour into it, her toes were bleeding ad her muscles screaming, but her mind was refreshingly clear. It was nearly four in the afternoon when she borrowed the gym showers, changed into fresh workout clothes and taped her toes. They were black and blue from the pressure, open cuts between them and around the toenails turned sluggish. They would heal by the next morning.

One of the best parts of the serum to be honest. She could fall into the brutal embrace of the dance over and over again. After rehydrating and checking for updates from Isaiah—a quick note to say he’s finalizing all arrangements before dispatching her because he wants her to get paid even when she just wants the job—, she rearranged the mats and began another long series of stretches. Loose and warm, she focused on her breathing now. Low pulse rate and respiration played into every cover she’s ever worn for a job.

She wanted to ask for another sitrep, but she didn’t. She wanted to call Isaiah and tell him to get off his ass and send her the details, but she didn’t. She wanted to call James, and make sure he was okay, but she didn’t.

While she found it hard to want for her, she could want for others just fine. And in this case, she wanted to fix Tony’s problem. Arrogant as hell sometimes and definitely overbearing, he didn’t ask for help unless he really needed it.

He asked her to help the kid.

So she had to keep her attention on the ambush the kid was about to walk into. Because there wasn’t even a trace of doubt in her mind that Tony hadn’t told him she would be there. He’d made the arrangements, but not the reveal. Even more likely, he'd probably planned to be present when the kid got there. Like so many things lately, it was out of their hands.

Spider-Punk—yes the name would definitely stick—would give her a more honest reaction if he had no one to buffer his surprise. What had she told Steve about Wanda? She wasn’t field-tested. The kid had been in the field already, but had he yet been in a kill or be killed scenario? Had he faced the consequences of a bad choice? Had he lost?

It was easy to play hero when you outmatched those you went against. When you never lost. But when the bodies piled up?

Stronger men had been broken.

“Ms. Romanoff. Mr. Parker has arrived. Shall I direct him to the training room?”

Parker. Well now she had a full name at least. “Yes, Friday. Please keep him in the dark about who he is meeting.”

“As you wish, Ms. Romanoff.” There was a note of hesitation in Friday’s voice. Damn Tony’s AI’s were so lifelike, it reminded her that it was a very good thing he was on their side and that he’d never really brought to bear everything he could do after she fled the compound.

“What is it Friday?”

“Mr. Parker’s former AI Karen is deeply concerned for her charge. He means very well, but he’s…”

“Enthusiastic?” Because that had always been a problem in the Room. Every once in a while, just every once in a while, one of the girls’ would get cocky. She would have won ever match, exceeded expectations, and then began to see herself as more than the place that made them. Then she would like what those accomplishments made her, and more she would like doing them.

Those girls died just the same, but often times with more blood.

“Tell her I understand.”

“Thank you, Ms. Romanoff.”

Then Natasha deliberately positioned herself on the mat in a stretch, one leg curled beneath her so she could spring upward if necessary. She had her back to the door, and her head down—it would give Parker the line of her curves, without much else to go on.

The doors opened with a rush of air and the thud of shoes. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Mr. Stark. I had to stay after class because I forgot to turn in an assignment, then Ned wanted to show me a new program he’s been writing, and I missed my train. Then there was this really nice lady on the train, and she had too many bags, so I helped her with them and I had to run across the park, but I’m here and—oh…you’re not Mr. Stark.”

The kid didn’t breathe between his sentences either. His shoes squeaked as he skidded to a halt. Unfolding from her stretch, Natasha stood.

“Holy shit you’re—”

Pivoting, she faced the wide-eyed kid with the slack jaw.

“Natasha Romanoff,” she introduced herself. “And you’re Peter Parker.”

His eyes got wider if that were possible, and he tore his gaze off her to look around. “Where is Mr. Stark? Did you hurt him?” Then he dropped his backpack and took two threatening steps toward her. “I’m not going to let you hurt him.”

From stupor to action in a few seconds. Not bad. Not great. But not bad. “Tony’s on a mission.” She gave him the single piece of data and waited. A dozen different thoughts played out across his face. Upset. Worry. Fear. Curiosity. No wonder he wore a full-face mask—he was an open damn book.

His wild gaze flicked around the gym, then back to her. “Friday?”

“Yes, Mr. Parker?”

“Where is Mr. Stark?”

“Mr. Stark is currently on a mission with the Avengers.”

Well, at least he verified the information. Not bad.

“Okay, so you told me the truth.” He nodded like he’d expected it when he clearly hadn’t. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” She made no move toward him, but she also didn’t relax her stance. If the kid understood body language at all, he would interpret it as potential threat. Apply a little pressure, don’t look away, don’t blink.

“I think you’re a wanted criminal, and I could call the cops—or the FBI or someone right now.” He made a move to his pocket, then blinked as he patted his front pocket, then his back. Then he glanced around, and swallowed convulsively.

Not smiling, Natasha nodded her head toward the edge of the mats. “Your phone is on the floor next to your backpack.”

He whirled to look over there, relief washing over his face so swiftly. “Oh man, I thought I’d lost another one and Aunt May was gonna kill me.” Then as soon as the words were out, his eyes bugged.

Yep. Zero filter.

“Anyway,” she moved him along from the gaffe. “You could call the authorities on me?”

“Yeah, you—you’re like a master assassin and terrorist person, which is weird cause you were like an Avenger. But you were supposed to be on our side, and then you weren’t. You betrayed Mr. Stark—you let Captain Rogers go.” Unease slid through his posture, but he didn’t back track to retrieve his phone. The kid wasn’t comfortable with what happened at the airport.

Interesting.

“Did I?”

“Yeah,” he said with a swift nod. “You did. Mr. Stark said so. Mr. Stark is the one who brought me there, and he told me that Captain America thought he was right, but he was wrong and it was what made him dangerous.”

He hadn’t said that while on comms, so Tony must have told him that on the flight over maybe.

“What did you think?”

“I don’t know.” The confession made him blush. “I believe Mr. Stark—and I know he got real hurt, even though he pretended he wasn’t. He couldn’t sit quite right for a while and his face was pretty bruised. But…Captain America is back now, isn’t he?”

“Hmm-hmm.” The kid was confused. He didn’t understand what she was doing there or really why any of it went down in Berlin.

“So I guess things are okay with them again?”

“You’d have to ask Tony.” She was going to step on that landmine at the moment. Right now, she had to assess the kid. “Anymore questions?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I wanted to know if you had anymore questions or if it was my turn.”

“Umm…yeah. Except—no. Why are you here? If you’re not here to hurt Mr. Stark, why are you here?” Perspiration hinted along his forehead, and he kept licking his lips. Anxiety? Perhaps. The fear in him seemed to have leeched away. Either her lack of actually attacking him had let him develop some confidence, or he really didn’t understand her skillset.

Probably both.

“To meet you, Mr. Parker.”

“You can call me Peter,” he said it so quickly; she almost smiled. “I mean—yeah, okay, I guess yeah. I’m Peter.” He sighed heavily.

“It’s nice to meet you, Peter.”

“Really?” The light kindling in his eyes was fierce and eager. “I mean we kind of met at the airport. Mr. Stark said this is Spider-Kid, and then said you guys were the team.”

That was true. “Yes he did.”

“So it was kind of an introduction.”

“Yes it was.”

“Okay, good I just wanted to make sure we both agreed that this isn’t really the first time we were meeting which means you aren’t really here to meet me, because you met me. Did you want to find out my secret identity? Cause I don’t think that’s really very fair. You’re not supposed to be in New York. The news said they thought you were somewhere in Greece or Turkey.”

“Well, you can’t always believe what’s on the news.” The kid’s ability to follow logical reasoning wasn’t bad.

“I suppose.” He kicked his feet. “Okay…I think I’m done now. I guess…except—are you here to try and kill me, Ms. Black Widow, ma’am?”

_Are you here to kill me Agent Romanoff? Because I don't think that's going to work out for everyone._

“Well, if I were here to kill you, Peter,” she told him truthfully. “I would have shot you the moment you walked through that door.”

He whipped around to look at the door, and put a hand over his chest like he could feel the shot. “Oh. That’s a no then?” With a side-eye to her, he shuffle stepped again. Painfully awkward, he was lean built, dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoody. He looked like every other kid she’d seen in America or on one of those teen shows. A little baby faced, probably didn’t get much in the way of stubble yet, and viciously vulnerable.

Arms folded, she studied the way he darted his gaze around. It was like he expected something else to happen. The longer she was silent, the more his tension expanded until he finally said, “Ms. Black Widow?”

“Natasha.” Because really Ms. Black Widow was too much, even from Spider-Punk.

“Natasha…is it really okay to call you by your first name? I mean, it’s not disrespectful or anything?” He rolled from his heels to the balls of his feet and back.

“Yes, it’s fine.”

“Okay, well you can call me Peter.” Then he seemed to remember she already had, and a blush warmed his neck. “You’re not here to kill me—and not Mr. Stark either, right?” Suddenly all the painful shyness vanished and his eyes grew fierce. “You’re not here to hurt Mr. Stark.” That wasn’t a question.

Protective.

Yeah, Tony was right. This kid was going to get himself killed.

“No, Peter. I’m not here to hurt Mr. Stark. In fact, I’m almost certain if I were here to hurt Mr. Stark, Friday would have flooded this room with poisonous gas a long time before you arrived.”

“Correction,” Friday intruded. “I would probably use a modified combination of remifentanil and carfentanil to render you unconscious, trusting your physiology to overcome the potential side-effects, Ms. Romanoff.”

Peter goggled at the ceiling. “Those are derivatives of fentanyl. Even in the right concentrations, they can kill people.”

“Is that really a concern if it’s stopping a potential killer?” Natasha challenged him.

“Yes,” Peter declared firmly, and met her gaze. No trace of the shy and awkward boy. “Killing people is wrong.”

“That s a very idealistic of you.” Painfully so. In his own ways, the kid reminded her of both Tony and Steve. Earnest, and open as Steve often times seemed, yet remarkably lacking in a verbal filter for the way his brain raced just like Tony.

“It’s not idealism. Killing is wrong.” Very firm in his convictions too.

“Even if the only way to survive is to kill the other person?” The law said self-defense wasn’t a crime. What did Peter Parker say?

“There’s always ways to avoid it.” The belief seemed to shine right from the core of him. “You can defuse a situation. You can disarm the person…”

“And if they have a gun pressed to your aunt’s forehead and your only chance of saving her is to take them out first? What then?”

“Then I get the gun.” He made a motion with his wrist, but frowned and slipped a glance to his bag. He wasn’t wearing his web shooters. Good to know. So he didn’t wear his gear while in civilian clothing, not even hidden away in case he needed it. That was another vulnerability. “Killing people doesn’t make things better.”

“Probably not,” she said with a shrug. Though it certainly eliminated a lot of bad things coming back. She could count Leonid, Alexei, and Yuri off on one hand. Ivan and Madame B on the other. Alexander Pierce. Rumlow. There were lots more. “But it can save lives. So you have to ask yourself, what’s the worst crime—killing the killer or letting them be around to hurt someone else.”

“No, I don’t.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to ever ask myself that question.” Paling, he folded his arms like he needed to hug himself. “And I think we kind of wandered away from you actually answering my question.”

Since she’d answered the one about Tony, she wanted to see where he would take this. “Which question was that?”

“Well, the one I kind of didn’t ask.” And all that confidence crumbled as he stammered a little. “Just—why did you want to meet me?”

“You know, I think it’s my turn to ask some questions. And I only have two.”

He appeared to consider it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah okay, I guess that would be the polite thing.”

“Excellent. Where did you get your powers?” Because he had strength, agility, and he could stick to things. The web shooters he made. The suit Tony made him also offered him some perks. But she’d seen him fight Steve, and James reiterated how strong he was.

“Why does that matter?”

“Because you’re very young. And the only things I know that can give men those kinds of abilities tend to make them insane. So where did you get your powers?” He was young enough, and Leonid and Alexei were active long enough—even Smith or Fenhoff or whatever he wanted to call himself was operating out of New York. Had they used some derivative of hers to experiment on this kid?

He dropped his hands and slid them into his back pockets. “If I tell you, will you promise not tell anyone? Not even Mr. Stark?”

That intrigued her. The kid was way too open to be trying to pull a fast one. Unless he was pulling a long con, and no—that was not what she was reading off him. Even if he were a sleeper, she didn’t think he could pull off that level of earnest innocence. All things that made someone a sleeper tended to wear down those edges until they were dulled or nonexistent. “As long as I don’t think there’s someone who _needs_  to know it. Then yes, I can promise that. Friday, privacy mode please, disable all listening and monitoring for the next five minutes. Voice commands only.”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff.”

The lights on the cameras flickered off.

Peter stared at her, surprised.

“Clock’s ticking kid.”

“I was on a school field trip and I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to go.”

“I’m going to need more than that. Where was the field trip and where did you go?”

He grimaced. “Man, do you really have to know all of it?” The fact he was asking her already told her he would follow orders. This kid was killing her. Open and earnest weren’t the right words.

If someone like the Red Room ever got their hands on him…

“Yes. Tell me.” Three crisp words. One stern command.

“It was to one of the science divisions of Oscorp. Everyone in the STEM club got to go. But the presentation was boring and they weren’t telling us anything we didn’t already know, so when they took us on the guided tour of the lab level, I went looking. I was just curious…” Despite his defensive words, he grew glummer by the second. “I ended up in this little lab where they were working on infusing Oz with some animals, testing the effects. I’d kind of heard about Oz when I was doing research on Oscorp…by hackingtheircomputersandreadingfilesIwasn’tsupposedtoread.”

The last came out a garbled mess, but Natasha understood it.

“Dr. Stillwell was using a recombinator and I wanted to see what it was like, I didn’t realize they were trying to synthesize something like Captain America’s super serum, but the files…they said they were working with a derivative as part of a joint international project.”

Her heart sank.

“The recombinator was supposed to make it stronger, or keep it from breaking down. Lots of the animals they tested it on didn’t make it, but they had one spider that apparently got into the tray with the serum they were using and hit with the rays from the recombinator. They hadn’t figured out what it did.”

That was a lot of detail.

“What happened to the spider?”

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “I may or may not have knocked over the tray where they had its housing. And when I tried to put it back—it bit me.”

“Do you know what kind of spider it was?”

He turned a hot red, and looked away, his mumbled response too low for her to understand.

“What?”

“A black widow.”

Irony. It was not a term she enjoyed in any facet of her life.

“And after it bit you?”

“It kind of died…” Peter grimaced. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did, so I kind of hid it and then left. Nothing happened right away, except I got real sick. Like really sick. I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick before. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were real worried. Then I got better, and I wasn’t just better, I was stronger and I was faster and I could do all kinds of things and sometimes it was like I just knew that I could…and it was fun.”

Something moved through his expression that tugged at her again. An old friend of hers—pain.

“Then Uncle Ben died, and that was kind of on me, cause I didn’t do anything.” He lifted his shoulders. “So now I kind of have to. I mean I want to, but I have to.”

Yep.

Never going to stop.

“Okay.”

Oscorp.

Oz.

They were next on her list. If they had any of her blood or derivatives, she would burn it to the ground.

“That’s it?” Peter seemed surprise. “Just okay?”

“I asked you where. You told me.” They’d used something of her to make him. It was—strange. It might not also be true. But it was close enough.

He ran a hand over his face, swiping away a tear she pretended to not see fall. “You said there were two questions?”

Her decision had been made long before he told her that story. She made it about two minutes after he walked into that room. In truth, she’d probably made it when Tony asked her, but she wasn’t going to do it for Tony or to spite Steve or anyone else. Hopefully Steve would understand— _hopefully I can make him understand._

She was going to train this kid because _he_ needed it. All she had to do was convince him to let her.

“Can you keep a secret?”


	8. Sharpshooter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the best thing Clint can do is just to have their backs.

**Chapter Eight**

**Sharpshooter**

**Clint**

 

 

Clint Barton recognized three absolute truths thanks to his current situation. The first was that of all the injuries he’d sustained in the line of duty, this broken leg had to be the most frustrating. It wasn’t the pain that troubled him, but the limitations on movement and the real possibility he would lose muscle mass.

The second was while he had a history as a terrible patient—not even holding a candle to Natasha as she belonged well outside of the bell curve—he loathed being grounded to the Compound, under medical observation, physical therapy, and regular check ups by every experimental physician in the building with an idea of what could get him better faster. Heal up quicker? Great. Be a guinea pig? No, he’d seen that movie.

The third was Dr. Helen Cho might be a world-renowned geneticist and brilliant blah, blah, blah—but either that woman was an alien or she was a sadist. Not that either were mutually limited concepts. At 5 a.m. each morning, she arrived to do a full reading of his status. Since everyone kept telling him it would be months until he was fully healed, he had no idea what the hell she expected to change each twenty-four hours.

At first, he tried to just sleep through it in an effort to discourage her talking or pressing. That didn’t slow her down from turning up the lights, engaging her scan equipment and shooting x-rays of his leg. Then she’d hum and study the images before, checking every piece of equipment monitoring him, and making recommendation changes.

It would be six before she left, and all she ever did was smile and promise to see him the next day. He might get another thirty minutes of sleep before the therapist showed up with Dr. Cho’s new recommendations.

Every.

Damn.

Day.

At the end of the day, that was when she went in for the kill. The cradle had been modified, and she would love a chance to get him up and moving faster. How would he feel if she made some tweaks, on a micro-cellular level, nothing too invasive? Every day, he declined. Something about genetic modifications danced too eerily close to the edge of serums and vita rays and scientists gone wild.

But she kept coming back. He really hoped no matter what she turned out to be that the 5’10, 125 pound delicate looking woman didn’t think her mental torture was going to get him to change his mind. Nope.

No sir.

He already warned Tasha. If she thought he was slipping or worse, disappeared into scientist hell, she’d know right where to look. How would Dr. Cho like that, huh? Clint was pretty sure Natasha wouldn’t even break a sweat taking her apart. It would be nice if they took care of that little issue of her fugitive-status, then she could come over and stare Cho down every morning.

That would make him feel better.

It could also be that he was bored out of his skull.

Currently, he sat in what might be labeled a solarium—his leg extended and propped by the full leg fractural brace he had to wear. Every time he wanted to complain about the damn thing, he shut up. Rhodey made his way around in a pair of mechanical braces that allowed him to walk despite his spinal damage.

It could be worse.

It could be a lot worse.

So no, Clint sat in his _wheelchair_ with his leg extended and his gaze on the yellow and brown grass. It was a windy, cool day with the promise of a storm coming. The shifting pressure made everything in his leg ache. At least his shoulder had shown improvement, but then he’d gone through his daily torture session and he was holding off on taking the prescribed painkillers as long as possible.

And fuck if he wasn’t bored.

He had Vision for company—yay—when he wasn’t off on a mission. Clint never knew exactly when he’d show up. There had been a FBI agent and a committee representative who’d come to see him. The former had been a rather genial guy, who took care of attaching the ankle monitor to his uninjured leg and calibrating it. The second had gone over the final details of his pardon.

Tony had sailed through a couple of times in the past week. Fly by visits to see if he could do anything for him, or if he needed something. Those visits felt like they were more for Tony, like he needed to know Clint was okay with his own eyes. Which wasn’t so bad.

Steve came by three times, once when he’d first returned to the States, when Tasha had gone missing on them. Well, she’d gone on her own personal mission. Steve had known that much. She wasn’t _missing_ even if he didn’t know where she was. Clint hadn’t missed the gleam of hope in his eyes that Clint knew where she might be. Which he didn’t…because someone had failed to read him in to her little op. A subject they would definitely be revisiting the first time they let her pain-in-the-neck, self-sacrificing, Russian ass back in to see him.

Or sooner, if he could stage a breakout.

The second time Steve came had been about twenty-four hours after the news stories broke with details of Ross’ actions including his torture and assignment of a mind-controlled assassin to kill Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. The press had feasted on every deliciously scandalous detail.

And they had pictures.

Yep, that was his partner. Letting herself be burned. Getting hit in the face, and offering compliance to Ross’ plan. Genius. Absolute genius. She opened a door and invited him to hang himself. Natasha always had been the best. Steve visited on the pretext of letting him know Natasha had shown up at the Tower. Where Clint might have expected relief, however, he’d found a deeply troubled and frankly furious man.

“She just—let him do it. Why would she go that far?” Steve had asked suddenly, his hands clenched into fists and his knuckles white. “Why would she just stand there as though she had no choice while he poured _boiling_ water over her hand? Clint—I listened to every moment of that video and tape before the committee shut it off when he said collateral damage was acceptable. She didn’t even whimper.”

Clint understood, he didn’t like it, but he understood. Trying to explain to Steve Rogers that if Tasha’s choices were her suffering and what helped anyone else, she would always choose suffering was no easy task. He’d known her for over fifteen years. Been her partner for most of those years, and thankfully, her best friend. Even if his emotions grew conflicted where she was concerned, he wouldn’t trade a single year of that acquaintance for anything else.

To his credit, Rogers wanted desperately to save her. He wanted to stand in front of her, holding that shield and repel any harm coming her way. Clint respected him for it, and hell, he even cheered him on. If only it were that easy. Natasha would never put herself or her safety first. Pain could be endured.

Fucking Red Room.

The third time, Steve dropped in it was because Sam Wilson was back. They’d come by together, and talked about a lot of nothing. No mention of Natasha. Not even a whisper when Sam asked if they knew where she was. For a guy who couldn’t lie worth a damn, Rogers’ expression didn’t even twitch. If only Nat could see him right then, she might really understand just what she meant to the man—of course, if that happened, she might disappear so fast they’d never have a hope of finding her.

Barnes had only visited twice. Once with Steve that first day of their return to New York. He’d been circumspect and silent. About as gregarious as he’d been in Switzerland. But there was a cool distance in his stare as he looked out the windows and over the grounds. He likely catalogued every space a sniper could set up, did a full threat assessment, and yet he wasn’t really there with them. His attention was wherever Natasha had gone.

It was more than a week before the second visit, which happened that afternoon along with Wilson, Rhodey, and two four star generals—including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The only information Clint got leading up to the meeting was a text from Barnes asking for him to sit in.

As those things went, it wasn’t so bad. The conversation had been more informal, and while Barnes covered his discomfort well, he didn’t pretend to be some average guy just having a chat about the possibilities of his future in the same breath as the horrors of his past. Sam Wilson, however, got on his nerves—and Clint’s. He seemed like a good guy, but couldn’t resist taking little jabs at Barnes.

While he didn’t think the generals noticed, Rhodey had and he’d given Wilson a frown a couple of times. Barnes never responded to the caustic remarks, he just kept focusing on General Ryker, which was fair, Ryker seemed all in on making the pardon happen. When he asked Barnes for a word in private, the former assassin seemed almost relieved.

Which brought Clint full circle to why he sat in the solarium. Barnes and General Ryker had been walking outside for the better part of an hour, talking. From where Clint sat, Nat’s second boyfriend seemed to be emerging from his self-imposed shell and smiling once or twice in spite of his reserve.

The general finally shook his hand, and walked away, likely off to meet Rhodey and the other general before Rhodey flew them back to DC. Barnes hadn’t returned inside. He’d stood in the weak sunlight, hands in his pockets and staring broodingly at the woods in the distance. Clint might have mocked his man pain, except Barnes had a right to every moment he wanted to linger in. After checking his watch, Clint decided to give him another ten minutes and then he’d wheel himself out there and lure him in.

A message buzzed to his phone and he flipped it over half-expecting to see Nat’s codename pop up on the screen. He didn’t think she’d appreciate the Mrs. Weasley appellation but it made Clint smile.

_Final arrangements made. Kids and I will arrive Sunday. Week off from school. They can’t wait to see you. Still good there?_

Hell yes it was still good here. He grinned at the phone—at Laura—and unlocked the screen to send.

_All clear. Stark set up suite in the Avengers wing. All private. Can’t wait._

He really couldn’t. It seemed years since he’d seen Cooper, Lila, or Nate. The video calls helped, but he wanted to give his kids a hug. He wanted Lila to sit in his lap and tell him every detail about school, and who were the great kids, and who weren’t. He wanted to sit with Coop, talk sports, and girls, and whatever else was on his mind. He’d been going crazy for models, and structural engineering a few months earlier. Was that still his private passion?

And Nate? He couldn’t wait to cuddle that bundle of energy while he babbled full stream ahead. Maybe even decipher a few words out of it all. Then there was Laura… The last time he’d been in the same room with her, she’d told him if he walked out the door to not come back. It had been both painful and cathartic. Fuck, he’d missed her.

A week with her and the kids away from all their responsibilities? Even stuck in the compound, it seemed like a gift.

_The kids are excited. Lila wants to know if Auntie Nat will be there?_

Just like that his mood crashed back to reality. She was about ninety miles due south, and Laura and the kids couldn’t know that. Since her fugitive status remained unchanged, though there were a lot of other questions being asked in light of the video leaks—including the ones involving the torture that Laura had kept the kids from seeing so far, no one could know where she was.

Along with Stark, Rogers, and Barnes, Clint had agreed that the fewer who knew the safer she would be. The only difference was the other three got to see her as they were living at the Tower, while Clint had to put on appearances at the Compound. He knew the government had watchdogs on him. His history with Natasha wasn’t a well known fact, but it wasn’t a secret either.

Chances were, they watched the Tower as well—but Barnes was on the down low for the moment even if the government had sanctioned his presence during the pardon talks. The only two in the free clear at the moment—funnily enough—were Steve and Tony. The sweeping pardon didn’t seem to include Clint yet, since his deal had been in the works prior to what went down with Ross.

Not that he could complain—at the moment—his current physical limitations made the ankle monitor and restrictions a fait accompli rather than a punishment. Still, Laura and the kids couldn’t know about Nat. Every person who knew was complicit and if it ever went sideways—the four of them had a plan to get Nat out and those who could make it with her would go and the rest would take the fall until they could be retrieved.

That wasn’t a plan they shared with her because she’d never go for it in a million years. Natasha never thought she was worth it, even when she was worth everything.

_Not here. Still running._

The lie tasted bad, but he swallowed it without hesitation. Nat’s safety came first. And honestly, it wasn’t the first time he’d lied to Laura and probably wouldn’t be the last. The lightness in his mood crashed. His leg ached, his shoulder was sore, and his ass was damn tired of the chair.

The sound of a quinjet hummed over the building. Barnes turned, shading his eyes, to where the landing pads were. Pushing the wheelchair back, Clint turned it with an expertise he’d already developed and faced the entrance most commonly used for those returning from a flight.

The Avengers wing boasted restricted access. Only someone accompanied by an authorized Avenger or one of the rare, yet credentialed civilians, were allowed entry. So despite the scientists, technicians, mechanics, engineers, and other specialties housed at the facility, the Avengers wing was even more private than the Tower had been.

Oddly enough, Clint smelled them before he saw them. Specifically—he smelled Cap, who strode through the doors in a soiled uniform coated in something sludgy that would probably not be out of place in a sewer. Eyes watering, he lifted a hand.

“Hey Cap—not all that happy to smell you at the moment.”

The man in question shot him an apologetic look. “On my way to the showers now. Already hit decon.”

He’d already hit the decontamination and he still smelled like that? Yeah, Clint did _not_ want to know.

“Be back in a few.” Then Steve disappeared down the hall toward a secondary set of decontamination showers. The ones on the jet might neutralize foreign particulates, but they weren’t the same as the showers in the facility that also offered a chance to clean up as well as decontaminate.

Vision flowed through the door, as clean and as free of debris as Cap had been covered in it. “Good evening, Agent Barton.”

“Hey,” Clint greeted him. Despite the fact Clint had helped break Wanda out by giving her the opportunity to get Vision out of their way, the android—was that even the right word?—didn’t seem to hold a grudge. “Everything go all right?”

“The mission was completed, though I hesitate to say it went all right. Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers appear to be in some disagreement over the latter.”

Some disagreement?

Speaking of the latter, Stark popped through the doors still in jeans and a concert t-shirt dating back to the late 70s, early 80s. His smile said nothing to see here while his eyes challenged the theory.

“Legolas, you’re looking mobile.” Tony patted Clint’s good shoulder as he sailed past him. “Tell me there’s coffee. And food. We need food, I’m starving.”

Spinning the wheelchair with care, Clint tracked Tony as he made his way across the solarium to the kitchen just on the other side of the wall.

“And there is no coffee…” His complaint echoed back. “Friday, why do I pay all the bills here if no one has coffee ready when I arrive?”

“Because you own everything, Boss and you don’t want staff in the Avengers wing.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Tony grumbled. “Order some pizzas—standard order, maybe double it for Rogers, along with an enema so he can dislodge the stick up his ass.” Strolling back out of the kitchen, Tony had a bottle of water in hand. “Want anything Clint?”

“I could go for some breadsticks, but better not. Have them throw in a salad.” At Tony’s incredulous look, Clint smirked. “Some of us are stuck sitting on our ass and unless I plan to gain about eighty pounds, I’m not eating pizza every day.”

“Hmm.” The billionaire scratched at his chin. “Fair enough. Friday, find the healthiest salad place to order from and lets get those on the way, too.”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

Vision stood gazing out the windows. Though he didn’t seem to have any hobbies Clint had noticed, he did spend a lot of time navel gazing or maybe he was just contemplating deep thoughts.

It kind of looked the same.

Tony slung himself down in a lounge chair and put his feet up. Weariness hung off of him, but he didn’t offer anything up until Barnes slid through the doors and then he straightened as though the last person he expected to see was Barnes.

“Rhodey brought up another couple of generals to meet with him,” Clint said as he eased his chair over. “I sat in, so did Rhodey and Wilson. Seemed to go well.”

“Yeah,” Tony murmured. But his expression said that while Barnes wasn’t unwelcomed, he really was unexpected.

“Hey Barnes.”

“Stark,” the man said, heading for the kitchen. “Need water, Clint?”

“Won’t say no,” he replied, as he settled back. He might be too close, but something was up. Of course, with the lack of verbosity from Tony and Vision’s presence left Clint concerned for Nat.

They were all here and she was at the Tower by herself. He tapped his thumb against the phone. Then flipped it over, found her contact information, and fired off a _sitrep_ followed by a _Words with Friends_ challenge. She might ignore the first, but she enjoyed the hell out of giving him a sound thumping with her vastly superior language skills in his native language.

Barnes wandered back in and pressed a water bottle into his hand before settling in a chair with its back to the wall and angles on the entrances.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Vision greeted him.

“Red Robot.” Barnes lifted his bottle in greeting. Clint was hard pressed not to snicker, because Barnes said it so damn deadpan.

“I am still growing accustomed to the interpersonal communications of humans,” Vision said slowly. “Sarcasm and nicknames in social situations, however, can indicate contradictory responses such as affection or disdain.”

“Sometimes they can just be sarcastic, too.” Barnes drawled, before taking a long drink of water. “But I’ll call you Vision if you’ll just call me Bucky.”

“As you wish…Bucky.”

Clint didn’t bother to hide his snicker. The cyborg and the robot discussing etiquette.

“Vision.”

Adjusting his ass to help alleviate some of the numbness, Clint shook his head.

“What’d the general say?” Tony asked. “And which one was it? Didn’t think they’d move that fast.”

“General Ryker,” Bucky said with a shrug. “He wasn’t there last night. Turns out, he’s on board. Gonna offer his recommendations to the Commandant of the Army. I was never really out, MIA listed as KIA doesn’t mean I was discharged. Fancy that.”

“Yeah?” A hint of a smile softened the worried expression on Tony’s face. “That’s good news.”

“Gonna take a few days, but I’ll be getting back pay, and once they process me back in, they’ll get started on terminal leave which means I have about five—five and a half years of leave accumulated before my discharge is final.”

At thirty days a year for seventy years, that was a lot of accumulated unused leave time.

“Feeling good about it?” Clint asked, even if he already knew the answer. Tony wasn’t quite dancing for joy. Considering it had been his plan that got them this far, it suggested something about it worried him.

“Haven’t decided,” Bucky told him honestly. “Told him I didn’t really care about the leave—and I don’t. Don’t much care about the backpay and interest either.”

“Except it’s a hell of a lot of money,” Clint pointed out. “You were a prisoner of war, government owes it to you.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, but it ain’t what I feel.” He considered his water bottle a moment before tipping it back for a drink.

“At the standard rate of pay for a sergeant with your experience, adjusting for inflation, and length of time served increases, you should be receiving about 2.78 million dollars in back pay.” Vision calculated. “Did the general mention the interest rate?”

Bucky eyed Vision a moment, then shook his head before shoving the hair back off his face. “To be determined according to him. Seems excessive to me.”

“I could charge you rent if it will make you feel better,” Tony told him drily, but if Barnes actually tried to pay it—joke or not—that wouldn’t go over well.

“Nah,” Bucky grunted and stretched out a foot to place it against the table. “Just not interested in folks making a fuss. Only requirement I asked for was they can’t call me back up. If they want to keep on the books for five years, fine. But I’m not being recalled to active duty. Period.”

“Who’s on active duty?” Steve asked as he re-entered, this time wearing a button down with the sleeves rolled up, slacks, and his hair slicked back and damp. He’d trimmed his beard, too. Clint half thought he’d have shaved it by now since they didn’t have to lie low. Steve wore the same consternated surprise that Tony had shown for Bucky’s presence. “And what are you doing here?”

“Had a meeting, Stevie,” Bucky answered bluntly. “General Ryker wanted to meet with me since he couldn’t be there last night.”

Arms folded, Steve frowned. “He couldn’t wait until we got back?”

“Blame your buddy Sam for that one,” Bucky murmured. “He _insisted_ that I had to take it now.”

“Don’t hate, Barnes,” Wilson called as he joined them. “Someone needs to pull you out of the foxhole before you slip away.”

The absolute look of cold disdain in Bucky’s eyes for Wilson was pretty noteworthy. It wasn’t the chill indifference of the Soldier or the biting dismissal of Bucky Barnes. Oh. This just got interesting.

“Cap,” Wilson said as he crossed the room. Steve unwound long enough to shake his hand. “Good mission?”

“Yeah it was fine,” Steve shook that off, glancing from Sam to Bucky, then back again. “I thought you had some things to do in DC.”

“Yeah, got most of it wrapped up, but then General Ryker looked us up, told us he wanted to bring Barnes back down for a more private chat since he wasn’t able to attend. Since your boy didn’t want to play ball, we brought the ball to him.” Then he pinned a look to Barnes. “You’re _welcome_ by the way.”

Bucky just rolled his eyes, and didn’t say a word.

“I appreciate it Sam,” Steve’s manner warmed a bit. “Really. Thanks for looking out for him.”

The huff from Bucky’s corner might have been low, but unmistakable. He glared at Sam, and the hand Steve had on his shoulder as Sam grinned broadly. “You know I got your back, Cap. What’s a good wingman for anyway?”

Shoving out of the chair, Barnes stalked toward the kitchen completely bypassing the pair. Tony whistled slowly as he went, then began to laugh as he glanced from one to the other. His shoulders shook and he didn’t even bat an eyelash when Steve glared at him.

“Sam’s helping, Tony.” Not that Stark needed the reminder, but Cap did tend to get a wee bit defensive about his friends.

“Didn’t say a word,” Tony retorted, holding up his hands as he rose. “Not a word. You can deal with your baes your way, and I’ll just sit over here and be entertained.”

Steve frowned. Course, in his defense, without Lila, Clint would have missed that reference, too. Still—it was kind of funny. Bucky returned with a pair of beers, he handed one to Steve and Wilson looked at the second, but Barnes didn’t miss a beat as he took a long pull off it and then returned to his seat.

“You couldn’t grab a third one for me, man?” Wilson snorted.

“You got legs. And arms.” Bucky took another long swallow of the beer.

“And after I made a special trip just to get things rolling for you. You should be thanking me. Without me, you’d still be hiding out at the Tower instead of practically a free man.”

Bucky’s response was a single finger salute from the metal hand he had wrapped around the bottle. It was so Natasha, Clint didn’t bother to hide his laughter this time as it barked out of him.

“Bucky, Sam’s being a pal.”

“He’s being your pal all right, better not stop too soon, the impact would be painful.” At Bucky’s mutter, Tony lost it and leaned his head back as he laughed out loud.

“I am sensing a latent amount of hostility,” Vision commented. “Is there an issue we should be discussing?”

“It’s not that latent,” Tony chortled. “And maybe we should use our I language gentlemen. Talk it out, if we can’t hug it out.”

Tony got the single finger salute next, and Steve just stared at him.

“I don’t know Stark, maybe you should be the one to lead the charge on that I language considering how things went down.” Sam folded his arms, his assessing look pinned on Tony.

“You know what Wilson…”

“We’re good, Sam.” Steve cut Tony off, half turning to Sam. “Seriously, we’re good.”

“That’s how it is?” Wilson wasn’t convinced.

“He said they were good,” Bucky dropped in before Steve could reply. “Maybe you should get that hearing problem checked out, Wilson. You seem to have problems listening.”

“I listen just fine, to everything people say and don’t.” The knowing look in Wilson’s eyes as he glared at Bucky was a challenge he might not want to throw at the super soldier.

“You know,” Clint said. “Fill me in on the mission. Like the fourth one you guys have had this week. What’s going on?” Better to change the subject entirely before this devolved. Tony didn’t owe Sam any form of explanation. That shit had been worked out between Steve and Tony and Clint would thank them very much to not resurrect that pissing contest without Nat here to smooth over the ruffled feathers.

“Yes,” Vision seemed to agree. “It has been an interesting set of circumstances, though I believe today’s mission and the oil derrick may be indirectly related.”

“Probably because we found more of that bioorganic on the freighter, and the pirates who took the ship had about as much training as those idiots on the derrick.” Tony commented as he flipped out his StarkPhone and studied something on the screen, an air of disinterest floating around him.

At this point, the affect would only fool those who didn’t know Tony. But like Natasha’s masks, it was a defense mechanism and a way for him to disengage without actively retreating.

“What kind of bioorganic?” Despite the question, neither Steve nor Bucky jumped into the conversation, they were too busy having the war of the glares and not so subtle looks. Even Wilson seem preoccupied as he glanced between them.

“That is the interesting piece, Agent Barton. At this time, we have not identified the origin of the bioorganic. It doesn’t seem to be harmful in anyway, but it is also not a known quantity which makes the mystery more puzzling.” Vision described at length the series of tests Friday had run, then shared his own analysis.

Clint boiled it down to it had been something living at some point, but they didn’t know what it was or where it came from. It could be utterly benign and merely a coincidence, yet finding it in two places during and after two attacks, both involving crude oil suggested they shouldn’t ignore it until they eliminated all possibilities.

By the time food arrived, the tension in the room ping-ponged between plain rude, and downright hostile—at least between Bucky and Sam. Steve hadn’t helped matters, because when he wasn’t mediating, he seemed lost in thought. Barnes did not want to be here, but neither Steve nor Tony gave any indication they planned on leaving anytime soon. At least when they had their mouths full, there was a reason for the silence.

Tony excused himself when T’Challa called, and Vision finally wandered off to do whatever it was he did. God, Clint hoped Wanda came back soon. The android at least pretended humanity when she was around. While not a bad guy, Vision’s mostly alien behavior left Clint unsettled.

“Are we done here?” Bucky asked bluntly once the other two had left.

“Socializing is good for you Barnes,” Wilson told him, as if trying to make an attempt despite his earlier barbs. “You’re among friends. Relax.”

“Actually,” Steve said. “I need to talk to Clint for a bit, and then yeah. Gonna head back to the Tower. Been a long couple of days.”

Clint flicked a look to Barnes who groaned and tilted his head back. “Fine, I’m gonna get a smoke…alone. Without socializing. Because people are annoying.” Then he was up and on the move.

“Sorry Sam,” Steve told him. “Bucky’s just tired.”

“Not the word I’d use,” Sam told him lightly. “And if you’re tired man, why don’t you just hang out here? You still got a room. Be like old times.”

Steve shook his head. “Bucky’s not comfortable here. The Tower is quieter, fewer people around and even with things looking his way, I want him to be in a good space.”

 _Nicely done, Cap_.

“Maybe coddling him isn’t the way to go, Cap. It’s easy to fall into those patterns. Guys don’t want to go out, don’t want to be around people, they turn recluse and it gets even harder. At least here, he’d be among friends.”

Clint didn’t snort, because it didn’t matter if that were the truth or not. Natasha wasn’t at the Compound, ergo Steve was not moving back in.

“I appreciate it, Sam…really. I do. But we’re doing this his way.” Cap didn’t budge on the stance, but Wilson looked ready to dig in and argue his point.

“Hey Wilson,” Clint said. “Why don’t you fuck off for a bit? Cap wanted to talk to me and I’m not that mobile at the minute.” It was a polite shut it, or about as polite as Clint was going to be at the moment.

“Yeah, yeah,” Wilson waved him off good naturedly. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

No. No he really didn’t. Or if he did, he and Barnes were on a painful collision course. Either way, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Then Wilson finally strolled out, and Cap scratched at his beard as he looked out the doors to where Bucky had wandered, smoking.

“Here’s hoping he doesn’t go following Buck,” Steve said. So, he wasn’t oblivious to the tension between them. “Sam’s a good guy, but I don’t think Bucky’s ready for his help yet.”

Or not.

“They’ll figure it out,” Clint told him, then shifted. The ache in his leg seemed to stretch up his side. Yeah, he needed to get out of the chair soon—which meant back to the bed. He was only allowed to walk during physical therapy—bastards.

“You okay?” Steve studied him.

“Never been better—today.” Clint told him, keeping it light. “What’s up, Cap?”

“You mind if we take this somewhere less public?”

So it was Natasha.

“Sure,” he said. “We can head outside if you want. It’s a bit cold but I could use some fresh air if you’re willing to drive.” The cramping starting in his lower back was just going to get worse, and his shoulder wasn’t up for prolonged movement. Clint had steadfastly refused anything more than a standard wheelchair. He needed to have some control over his mobility.

“You got it.”

Ten minutes later, and a little manhandling by Steve of the wheelchair itself—and no it didn’t affect Clint’s masculinity at all to be lifted chair and all like they were nothing and carried down three steps—they parked next to the river. The trees gave them cover, and privacy from prying eyes.

Pacing in front of him, Steve folded his arms. “Tony’s asked Nat to train the Spider-Kid.”

“Okay.” That had its pros and cons. “Can we trust him with knowing where she is?”

Steve frowned. “Tony seems to think we can, and he knows the kid best. Except—he took his suit back cause the kid couldn’t be trusted with it, but he wants to trust him with Nat.”

“You don’t like it.” Clint wasn’t guessing here. Steve might be a better liar when the need called for it, but most of the time he really was what you saw was what you got. Right now, he was in overprotective mode. Had been since before Russia, but Russia cemented it. The Ross thing couldn’t have been easy, but he hadn’t brought it up.

“No, I fought that kid at the airport. He’s strong and he’s fast—”

Holding up a hand, Clint studied him. “Are you worried because he might out her or are you worried about her getting hurt if she trains him?”

“Yes,” Steve said flatly. “I said we could just have him come train with us—with me, if that’s what Tony thought he needed. But Tony doesn’t think he’s ready for the Avengers, but he’s ready for her?”

Definitely in fierce protector mode. “You talk to Nat about it?”

“Didn’t go well.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Clint said abruptly. “And while you don’t have to answer, I think you better.”

“What?”

“You and Nat worked together for how long? How is it you still haven’t figured out how to not tell her to do something because you think it’s dangerous for her?” Sometimes she absolutely needed to be sat down and told no. But it couldn’t just be no, it had to have a logical rational, and when desperate times called for desperate measures, a little emotional blackmail could be used but only with extreme judiciousness.

“This isn’t about working together.” Steve planted his hands on his hips and stared upward as if he needed to count to a hundred. “She’s…when we worked together we were a team. We made these decisions together. Discussed the rosters, the training, and even when she would be working with Wanda or against Rhodey in his suit or even Sam, we discussed the best way to play it. A lot of that became second nature, we just—worked and it flowed. Not sure that makes sense.”

“No, I get it,” Clint told him. “But here’s the thing, that was before. You guys were a team. You trusted each other not only to have each other’s backs. You trusted each other to know your own limitations.” It was the hardest part of working with Nat, because even when he hated the choices she’d make to get a job done—he couldn’t argue with her methods. They were effective as hell and she knew how to make it work for her.

“I still trust her.”

“No you don’t.” Clint dropped the verbal grenade on him and then let it sit there. Cap would either fall on it or deflect it elsewhere.

Frowning, Steve stared at him. “Yes, I do.”

“Look, Cap—it’s normal to want to keep the person you care about most safe. But you don't trust her with her own safety.” Clint wasn’t going to use the L word, frankly, he and Steve weren’t that close and secondly, it was something he still needed to get used to. Clint loved Natasha. He would probably always love her, and he wanted her to be happy more than anything in the world. Didn’t make it easy to watch her find it somewhere else, even if he’d never, ever make a move on her.

Just his reality.

And he had…well he’d had a wife, still did ‘til the divorce went through and he didn’t love Laura any less. “You think it’s just a lark that I kept Laura off the grid, in a farmhouse, in a small town, as far away from this life as possible?”

“You wanted to protect them, I get that.”

“Yep. I trust Laura with just about everything.” He let the small lie sit there because really, he was not going to get that personal with Cap. “Except her safety. That I wouldn’t negotiate on. After the last few weeks, I respect your need to bubble Nat up safely, but she’s never going to let you do that.”

The long sigh Cap released confirmed he already knew it. “Got any advice for that?”

Yeah. He did. “Be her partner,” he told him bluntly. “Don’t make her have to go around you to do things. Don’t be the obstacle she has to avoid because she’s concerned about your reaction. Now that doesn’t mean don’t fight with her, she can take care of herself. Be honest, even if you think it’s going to hurt her feelings, don’t just suck it up. But accept sometimes, no matter your objections, she’s going to do it anyway—then the only thing you can do is be a partner so you’re there if it all goes to hell.” And not sitting at the Tower while she stalks Ross and lets him torture her so she can get his confession.

He didn’t add that part, because frankly, he didn’t know how it had all gone down.

“Like Russia,” Steve said slowly.

“Pretty much.” That was about the crux of it. “At the end of the day, she was right.”

“At the end of the day, she’d been through hell,” Steve argued. “Just because she can heal so fast doesn’t make her expendable or fine to let her take that kind of a beating.”

“Hey Pot,” Clint said drily. “Why don’t you keep telling the kettle that?”

“I’m not that bad.”

Clint just stared at him. He’d seen the medical reports after DC. He knew exactly what Barnes—the Winter Soldier—had done to him. He also had a pretty good idea of what those injuries had done to Nat.

“Well shit…” Deflating, Steve slid his hands into his pockets. A disappointed and worried Steve Rogers was a hard thing to swallow.

So much for keeping it not so personal. “Look, it’s been a week…you guys are juggling a lot. I know the three of you are together—somehow. Not going to say I get it, but if it works for you three, great. But you’re worrying about her on a lot of levels, so why not just involve her in it? Talk to her. Tell her what’s in your head. Get her out of hers. Make one of those plans like you used to…at least then you’ll be on the same page.”

He’d say get her drunk and pull the dark details out, but Nat wasn’t ready for that yet. Russia, Alexei, Leonid and all those other bastards were still too fresh. The tipping point had come later; he’d seen her face after she’d found that tank room and later she’d explained it to him.

Nat had very few constants in her life, and the landscape kept shifting on her.

“I should be back there and not here.” First really smart thing he’d said.

“Yep.” Clint should just leave well enough alone, but… “This thing with Barnes and Nat, you sure you’re okay with it?”

His expression went thoughtful, but he didn’t hesitate to nod. “Weirdly, that’s not a problem I’m having. I thought I would—for a bit there, I thought if Bucky decided to pursue her too it was going to create issues. But…maybe if he wasn’t my best friend it’d be different. She needs him. Sometimes I think she needs him more than me, but most of the time I know it’s a different kind of need. It’s not a competition.”

Well that was healthy.

“Fair, so let this be the official warning from the guy in the chair…you hurt her. I’m a very good shot.” He'd warned them both in Italy, but that was before it was official.

Steve lifted his eyebrows. “If I hurt her you won’t have to be, I’ll stand still.”

“The same goes for Barnes.”

“Glad to know I rate,” Bucky drawled as he melted out of the trees. Clint didn’t hide the little jerk he gave too well and Steve just laughed.

“Wondered when you’d show up.”

“You were having a private chat, just kept watch.” Bucky had his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “We done now?”

“Awww, gee Barnes. You’re going to hurt my feelings.” He rubbed at his shoulder. The area wasn’t inflamed, but the constant itching told him it was healing.

“I’m sure they make a pill for that,” Bucky deadpanned. “They seem to make them for everything else.”

It was Clint’s turn to laugh. “Too bad they don’t make one for assholes.”

“Then you might be shit outta luck on your problems, Pal.” An actual grin settled on his face.

“Keep it up, and I’ll tell Wilson you’re just afraid to get close and he should talk to you more.”

The very unfriendly glare he received was reward enough.

“All right,” Steve pressed his palms down in a gentle waving motion. “Settle down and be nice.”

Clint shared a look with Bucky. Bucky really didn’t like Sam. Clint got it. But he was still gonna give him hell about it. One of the ways to return to the land of the living was to learn to laugh off the frustrations. Guy could use a little more laughter in his life.

“Well, you two better get me up that hill before you go because I’m not spending the night out here.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. At least they each took an armrest and walked him up the steps like he was nothing. That did nothing to emasculate him. No sirree. He was just fine. At least he had the emotional IQ to deal with Natasha on her worst day. So they could lift trucks. He had the better deal.

Or at least that was what he intended to tell himself.

Once they were nearing the doors, he held up a hand. “You two should just go, if you head back inside, chances are Wilson or Rhodey or someone is going to want to talk and it’s going to hold you up longer.”

“You sure?” Steve frowned. “You looked uncomfortable earlier.”

“Gonna be that way for a while, Cap. I’ll survive. Go on—” He lowered his voice. “Go take care of our girl. And grab some cookie dough ice cream on the way. It’s good for smoothing the waters but if you have to make nice, go for the pistachio. She can’t ever say no to it.”

There he was just dealing out all his secrets. Eh it was for a good cause. The pair bid him good night, and then hurried toward the landing pads. Clint pulled his phone out to check, no response from Nat and no play on the Words with Friends.

Something was up.

When he wheeled himself inside, Wilson was waiting for him. “Hey man…”

“Sam.”

Clint kept the chair moving and Wilson fell into step with him. “You got a minute.”

“Not really,” Clint told said honestly. “Kind of beat to be honest. Could have crashed a couple of hours ago.”

“Yeah, I get that—just a minute though.”

With a sigh, he slowed the chair and turned it to face the other man. “What’s up?”

“Something’s going on with Cap and Barnes. Do you know what it is?” Blunt question. Good, that mean he could use a blunt answer.

“Yes.”

“You gonna share?”

“Nope.”

“If something’s wrong, you’ll tell me right.”

“Nope,” Clint told him flatly. “It’s not my business and it’s not yours.”

“Man, I was there, too. The Raft, Wakanda…you and Cap weren’t the only ones in the middle of that. If I can help, I want to.”

Be that as it may… “Sometimes things aren’t about you. Sometimes the best thing you can do is not be an additional problem.”

“So in other words back off unless he asks me to help.” See, Sam wasn’t so bad, and he was a smart guy.

“That sounds like a plan.” He was still tired though, so he nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow Sam, if you’re around.”

“I’ll be here…if you need help with the PT, I’ve been there man.”

“I’ll keep it mind, but right now PT is the enemy, and I don’t think you want to be in that camp.” But Clint kept wheeling and Sam didn’t try to take over, so that was something.

By the time he reached his room, Clint was sweating. He flipped on the television and moved from the wheel chair to the armchair and put the footrest up. He could get back in bed, but the chair was pretty damn comfy and he didn’t want to lay down sweaty.

The news popped on, and he saw her name still in the little ticker running across the screen: _Black Widow is still MIA—where is the Black Widow?_

That was good. Let her keep falling out of sight.

Let the world forget about her.

It would keep her safer…

His phone rang, and he glanced at the caller ID, surprised.

“Hello, sir,” he said by way of greeting, not wasting any time on wondering how he got this number.

“Barton,” Fury greeted him. “We need to talk about Romanoff.”


	9. Partner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the Tower, Steve gets a front row look at Nat working with Peter.

**Chapter Nine**

**Partners**

**Steve**

 

The flight from Compound to Tower took less than twenty minutes. Tony had already been on the quinjet by the time he and Bucky boarded. Though he’d wandered off to talk to T’Challa, Tony was just kicked back in the pilot’s seat with his phone in his hand when they found him.

“’bout time,” was his only comment and then they were on their way.

Steve turned Clint’s advice over in his head. There had been a reason he’d gone to the archer. Arguably, he knew Natasha better than all of them—but everything he said resonated with what Steve _knew_ about her, too. Nat was never going to let him just protect her.

In fact, she’d probably laugh at him, kiss him on the nose, then saunter off to handle it her way just like she always did. Which wasn’t a fair assessment, not really. Nat worked well within the construct of the team, she could plan with them, she had a good eye for who should be where, and she could spot a weakness in the team faster than he could.

But she was used to working alone.

Fight on the Hellicarrier? Steve and Tony worked on the engine—well Tony did, Steve just had to move a red lever and keep Loki’s agents from shooting him or Tony. She, on the other hand, had to flee the other guy, and then take out Clint all on her own.

Battle of New York? She’d stayed on the ground with him, until she recognized that maybe what they needed to close the portal wasn’t about big guns. Then she was off his shield and up in the air—on her own.

Undercover ops? Mostly on her own, occasionally with a partner.

Lemurian Star? She took out the engine room—where he sent her and there had been a dozen guys down there—then finished her mission for Fury. On her own.

Getting the cradle from Ultron? She had been on that flying container on her own, and trusted Clint to catch her when she sent it flying. Then Ultron snatched her, still on her own.

In Lagos, they’d run it as a team op, but she’d handled the majority of her own fighting, up to and including nearly getting blown up by Rumlow, and she’d still secured the virus with a small assist from Sam for the last two guys.

Geneva. Leipzig. Then later in Siberia when she’d gone for Tony…

How much of it was her training? How much of it was the way she’d been used? How much of it was just her?

When they’d been on the run from SHIELD, she’d taken the time to show him how to slip by unnoticed. When he would have fought, she threaded him through the crowds with a light, but expert touch. Getting in to see Zola hadn’t even been about what Steve could break open or pull apart, it had been about her finding the path of least resistance to insert them through the layers of security.

With the Tower in sight, he pulled himself out of his ruminations to move up to the front. Bucky had tipped his head back, eyes closed as though he were napping. It had been a long couple of days for all of them.

“What’s up Cap?” Tony asked, sparing him a glance as he eased the quinjet toward the landing pad.

“Sorry about Sam,” was all he said. Sam was still sore about the Raft, and what he felt like was Tony’s betrayal in leaving them there when he went to Siberia. It would take a while, particularly since Sam barely knew Tony.

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Tony told him, waving it off. “Not the first guy not to like me. Won’t be the last.”

“I’ll talk to him. Just wanted to give him some time to settle in first.” Course, Sam wasn’t the only one carrying the suggestion of a grudge. Rhodey had brushed off Natasha like she hadn’t ever been a member of the team. She’d saved Rhodey’s life back when she and Tony had first met, so was his dismissal of her as a friend for show because they were in the middle of that party? Or did he really feel that way?

“Things are probably going to stay edgy as long as we’re all keeping secrets,” Tony reminded him. “You’re not telling him everything, and he isn’t a stupid guy. Rhodey’s already giving me side eye every few minutes. It is what it is.”

_We have what we have, when we have it._

“Think this is gonna get any easier?” Steve sighed as he leaned against the other chair. They’d made a tactical choice—they hadn’t told anyone about Natasha nor about Russia or everything that went down. Sam didn’t know about the lengths Steve and Tony had gone to repair the broken ground between them because the glue holding that together remained a secret.

“Well, we’re not trying to beat each other to death,” Tony drawled. “I call that improvement.”

Chuckling, Steve scratched his beard. It had been getting a little itchier, but Natasha seemed to like it. And in truth, he’d kind of gotten used to it. They were back, he was reinstated, but they still had the Accords to renegotiate, Natasha was still a fugitive, and the team was far from healed. They’d won, sure. But what had they lost?

“It’s all good, Cap,” Tony said, and surprisingly, he sounded like he meant it. Maybe not so surprising, the tension between them had been gradually thawing for days. They’d managed to work together, more than once, in and out of combat. Even better, their communication was better now than it had ever been.

“Yeah…hey Friday do you know if Natasha is still awake?” It wasn’t late, but it had been a long day and he’d not said a word to her when he left, and not said anything or heard from her all day. He’d expected Bucky to be at the Tower with her, and then he was at the Compound.

“Yes, Captain Rogers. She’s in the training room.”

This late?

That couldn’t be good.

“Don’t suppose you know if she’s eaten?” Because her lack of appetite over the last week had been worrying both he and Bucky. She’d lost some weight, but not muscle mass. If anything, she had more definition in her arms, but the last few weeks had whittled away anything extra off of her. Not that she’d had any to spare in the first place.

“Ms. Romanoff ordered in a few hours ago when Mr. Parker said he was hungry.”

Silence blanketed the inside of the jet. Steve couldn’t say he was surprised, she’d said she would meet him and let Tony know if she could train him. But he’d tried not to focus on the fact that was today. So she’d already met him, which meant there might already be a clock on when they had to get her out of there.

“Baby girl is Parker still at the Tower?” Tony pushed out of his seat after touching down.

“Yes, Boss. He’s on the training level with Ms. Romanoff.”

Steve checked his watch. It was getting late. Didn’t the kid need to go home?

Bucky waited for them at the ramp. “We going to check on them?”

“Well I am,” Tony stated. “I didn’t think the kid would be here five hours later.”

With a shrug, Steve followed and Bucky fell into step with him. While Steve couldn’t tell if Tony was upset because the kid was still there or that he was on the training level with Nat, he had to admit—he was curious about how it had gone. She really was excellent at reading people.

The ride to the training rooms and gym level was quiet. Steve hadn’t really known what to expect, but what he found had him swallowing another laugh.

The kid stood in the middle of the gym. There was a blanket, with what looked like the remains of their dinner, sitting on the floor closest to the wall and well away from where Parker waited, blind-folded with his arms folded.

“You know this would be easier if I could see,” he was saying.

“It’s not about easier.” Natasha’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Steve glanced around, then Bucky’s chin lifted and he zeroed in on something. Nat was leaning against one of the rafters, almost directly above the kid. The acoustics against the ceiling were doing different things with her voice. Tony went to open his mouth, but then stopped as he looked from Peter to Natasha, then back again.

If she noticed them, she gave no outward sign.

“All right,” the kid said with a long sigh. “I’m ready.”

“You sure you’re ready?”

“Yeah. I think so.” The kid made a couple of jumps in place, then stretched his arms.

Bucky made a motion to back up, and he and Tony eased against the wall and out of the way. They tried not to make a sound, but Tony’s shoe squeaked and the kid wrenched around.

“What was that?”

Steve didn’t take his gaze off Nat. She moved along the rafter, still not making a sound. If not for the enhancements to his visual acuity, he probably would have lost sight of her amongst the shadows.

She didn’t answer the kid, and then—damn if she didn’t just vanish while he was trying to track her. He glanced around the rafters, looking for any hint of movement.

“Mr. Parker,” Friday intoned. “The exercise begins in 5…”

A flicker of motion, Natasha let herself down onto the floor behind the weight equipment.

“…4…”

The kid turned in a slow circle, his hands up, but his defensive posture loose. He didn’t actually look like he expected a fight.

“…3…”

Natasha slipped around the weight equipment, moving with a slow, silent purposefulness it was hypnotic.

“…2…”

Parker twisted to the right, as if anticipating her arrival, but even when she was three feet away, he turned his head to the left.

“…1…”

She was a foot behind him, and stopped.

Parker tilted his head back, as though angling toward the ceiling. Then of all things, he moved away from her a couple of steps, then back one. Indecision seemed to radiate off the kid.

A minute passed and Tony shifted minutely next to him. Bucky didn’t move a muscle and Steve almost wanted to hold his breath lest they betray a sound in the oppressive silence.

After three minutes, Parker lowered his arms and tilted his head down as though he were trying to listen for her. But she wasn’t moving, if anything she seemed laser focused on him, but stiller than a statue.

“Friday?” Parker said after five minutes.

“Yes, Mr. Parker?”

“You did say the exercise was beginning, right?” The kid actually sounded confused.

“Yes, Mr. Parker.”

“Did…Natasha just leave me in here like a prank?”

“No,” Natasha said right at his ear. “I didn’t.”

Parker let out a shriek and leapt away from her even as he swung a fist back. It was all instinct, heightened adrenaline reaction. But she caught his arm flipped over it and then used his momentum to send him flying. The kid bounced once, then rolled onto his feet and whipped the blindfold off.

“Oh my god!” He was almost shouting, but it had more than an edge of panic to it. “Don’t _do_ that! Are you trying to kill me?”

Then the kid caught sight of them, and his face went red as he straightened abruptly. “Mr. Stark!” The kid’s eyes grew a fraction wider. He fumbled with the blindfold, then caught it. “Captain America…and um…” He looked at Bucky, then a sudden grin broke out. “Hey you’re the dude with the metal arm. That was so cool.”

Natasha touched a finger to the kid’s forehead and he jumped again. “And that is what happens when you get distracted.”

He blinked at her.

“Did I say the exercise was over?” The quiet question pulled another blush from him.

“Well, no but they’re here and you know it’s polite to say hi.”

Natasha just stared at him, expressionlessly and the kid fumbled.

“The exercise isn’t over, like the bad guys aren’t down, until you’re sure. Even a momentary distraction can cost.” He recited it like a memorized lesson. Not a bad one. Distraction during a fight got people killed. “But we weren’t really in a fight, so it’s not really a bad thing to get distracted?”

“No?” The challenge in that one word even made Steve straighten and Tony smirked.

“Maybe?” Parker’s voice dipped a little as he looked at her hopefully.

“Well is it or isn’t it?” She gave him no sign of what the right answer was, but Steve actually found himself rooting for the little guy. He was fast, and he was strong—but he was kind of innocent and earnest, too. Natasha wouldn’t do him any favors if she held his hand and walked him to the answer. Clearly, she knew that even better than he did.

Stark was right. Natasha was the right one to train him, and Steve had only seen the last few minutes. The kid had been here for hours, and there was a kind of warm focus to Natasha’s actions that had been missing the last few days.

“Exercise is still on Peter,” Natasha reminded him, the coolness in her tone giving it just a little more bite.

“It’s never a good thing to be distracted even if I can compensate for it.” He huffed out the answer in a hurry, then looked to her for approval.

“Better,” she said. “But you are not there yet. Last question, then you can go fanboy at Tony.”

The kid flushed red, and Tony actually cleared his throat. Steve didn’t even try to hide his smile. She was so damn good at defusing people, she could offer encouragement and a reminder not to get cocky in a single word or turn of phrase.

“Before you took the blindfold off, what did you do wrong?” It was a simple question, and Steve tried to put himself in the kid’s shoes. He wasn’t sure what the goal had been, but what had the kid done other than let her get that close without noticing? Was he supposed to notice her? Or was she going to attack him and make him fight blindfolded?

Natasha had done that to Steve.

Twice.

His pride still smarted from how that worked out.

_“You have excellent vision which means you are very used to relying on it. We’re not always going to fight in places where it helps you…what if someone shines a brilliant light in your eyes? Or a flash bang goes off? If you can’t fight without having some if not all of your senses impaired, it’s a weakness.”_

For the first time, Steve glanced at Bucky with an odd realization. He’d helped train Natasha. He’d helped to hone her survival and combat abilities. Had he taught her to fight without her senses? Or had that been the Red Room?

“I couldn’t see you, but you didn’t make any noise.” The last part came out riding a note of wonder. Which, Steve didn’t blame the kid. Natasha was quieter than a cat when she moved. She and Bucky both. “Not sure how I was supposed to tell where you were if I couldn’t see or hear you.”

“You have three other senses Peter,” she reminded him.

“But you’re not wearing perfume, just something that smells like citrus…” The kid stopped. “Oh.”

The red flush climbing his neck provoked too many memories of Steve’s own embarrassment at missing the obvious.

“I wasn’t thinking about the soap.”

“You could have stopped at the you weren’t thinking part,” Natasha said, and not unkindly. “You react, you fight purely on instinct with no strategy or engagement. You have _heightened_ senses, and an uncanny reaction time, none of which will do you any good if you can’t use what’s in here.” She tapped the side of his head gently.

“But you can teach me how to do it?” Peter was wholly focused on her, losing some of his sheepishness.

“I can show you, whether you can learn it or not is going to be on you. It won’t be easy. I will have rules you have to follow, no questions, and no excuses.” It was the same tone she used when she laid down the rules to Wanda, gentle, but firm. She wouldn’t be swayed. Like Wanda, Peter seemed to recognize it.

“I’m probably not going to like the rules, am I?”

“No,” she told him. “So you figure out whether you can do it and then we’ll talk… you did good earlier. You almost had me in that headlock.”

They’d been sparring apparently.

“No I didn’t,” Peter argued. “You slipped right out and smacked me upside the head.”

Natasha chuckled. “I told you, don’t hold back.”

“But I could hurt you.”

“I did hurt you.” The flat reminder gave Peter pause.

He stole a glance toward them, then looked at Natasha again. “If you’ll train with me, I want to try…I can follow the rules. Even if I don’t like them.”

“And keep a secret?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Not going to be good at that part,” Peter admitted. “But I won’t mention you or Mr. Stark or the training to anyone…not even Ned.” The last came out as a grimace. “But you can trust Ned, he’s a good guy…”

“Peter, I don’t trust you yet. So you telling me someone is trustworthy doesn’t give me a reason to think so. Tony shouldn’t have put you in the position to know that I’m here.” The little chastisement hit its mark. “But you do and you need training. Steve, James, and Tony are the only other people who know I’m here outside of Friday.”

She shielded Clint automatically. He wasn’t there, Peter didn’t know him, and had no reason to think he would know.

“That means no other Avengers, not the man on the corner selling hot dogs, your aunt, your best friend, or the girlfriend get to know. You don’t have to lie, you just don’t talk about it.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Peter mumbled.

Natasha didn’t roll her eyes, she really didn’t, but Steve could almost read it in her posture and he had to grin. She was good with this kid.

“So then not telling your non-existent girlfriend won’t be a problem.” She made it sound so reasonable.

“Yeah, okay.” Peter nodded, then he handed her the blindfold. “I guess I should get going.” He shot a quick look at Tony. “I have patrol and then homework.”

“Nope.” Natasha told him. “You have homework. A lot of homework.”

“But I have to keep an eye on the…”

“Peter,” she said it with just a snap on the last syllable that silenced him. “Rule number one, no patrols until we’ve gone over a few more basics, including the fact you run the same route every night.”

He flushed.

“It took me less than thirty minutes while we were eating to identify five places I could take you out and you’d never see me coming. You cannot embrace a routine so hard that people can predict where you’re going to be. It’s not safe for you and it’s not safe for the people around you. So…no patrols. You have no suit yet, so let’s concentrate on your education, shall we?”

The crestfallen look on his face was almost too much. Steve had to bite his tongue to keep from intervening.

“Should I come back tomorrow?” The glum, kicked puppy voice begged her to let him off the hook.

“Nope,” Natasha told him and the kid blinked.

“What? How am I supposed to train if I don’t…?”

“Lesson number three and your last one for this evening,” she said easily. “Patience. You want everything and you wanted it two weeks ago. You’re not going to get it. So give me a couple of days…then call me in forty-eight hours.”

“Forty-eight?”

She still didn’t roll her eyes. “I can make it seventy-two if you really insist.”

“No, no. Forty-eight is fine.” His voice climbed a quarter octave on the last.

Next to Steve, Bucky actually chuckled.

“But um…Natasha I don’t have your phone number.”

“You don’t need it,” she told him. “Call Friday, she’ll let me know.”

“Okay.” If the kid started kicking his feet, Steve wouldn’t have been surprised. He had the hopeful, wistful look on his face and he radiated disappointment. But if his goal was to play Natasha and wheedle her out of these rules, had he picked the wrong target.

“So what am I supposed to do with all my patience?” It wasn’t quite a whine, but it was definitely a complaint.

She ruffled his hair, then walked away from him toward the blanket. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here. You prove you can do that, Peter, then I’ll still be here to train you.”

“I won’t,” he assured her, squaring his shoulders. “I can do that.”

“And Peter?” She had her back to him, but Steve heard the trap opening under the words. “If you go on patrol, deal’s off.”

The kid deflated so fast there was no mistaking he thought he’d be able to do both. Keeping his expression neutral was a challenge, but when the kid glanced at them, it was Tony who spread his hands and said, “It’s up to her. You want to do this, you gotta do what she says.”

“And the suit?” Peter asked as if he were still weighing his decision. Even Steve could read this guy, the earnestness aside, he looked at Nat with wonder and awe—two emotions Steve was intimately acquainted with where Natasha was concerned.

“When she says you can have it,” Tony told him. “You done with the lesson, Red?”

“Yep,” Natasha had begun stacking together the takeout containers. Based on the volume, the kid ate on par with Steve. “He’s all yours.”

“Great, grab your stuff. I’ll drive you home.” Tony glanced at Natasha and she just shook her head. Whatever he wanted to ask her would have to wait, and Steve blew out a breath. Good, hopefully he could steal her away for a bit.

“I won’t let you down, Natasha,” Peter said from the door. “I promise and I’ll call in 48 hours from…” he looked at his watch. “Now.” It didn’t take long for Tony to get Peter on the move after that.

Steve and Bucky pushed away from the wall to help Natasha clean up. “How’d it go?” He could gauge it had to have at least gone well based on what he’d seen, but the kid had been there for hours, so maybe it had taken a minute?

Straightening slowly, Natasha rolled her head from side to side. “If I tell you he hits like a truck, are you going to get mad?”

“No,” Steve promised. “I might say I told you so, but I won’t get mad.”

It was the right response, because even Bucky grinned.

“Then I’m pretty sure when I can get him to actually hit me, he’ll hit like a truck,” Natasha admitted, and rubbed a hand against her lower back as she stretched. “As it was, he’s not bad. Hopelessly out of his depth, way too trusting, and absolutely no control over his micro expressions at all.”

These, in the Natasha Romanoff handbook, were all flaws.

“He listens to you, Natalia,” Bucky told her. “That is always a good first step.”

She smirked, but her gaze flicked to Steve. The wariness in those eyes cut him into little pieces. Never should she be wary of him. Time to fix that.

“Hey Buck, you mind taking care of the rest of this while I steal her away?”

“No problem, pal. I got it.”

“Hey,” Natasha caught Bucky’s arm. “How did it go?”

He gave her a slow smile and a shrug. “Ryker wants to help. Thinks they can get it all through. Might still take a few days but…he said he was on board.”

“That’s great,” she said, her smile growing. “What do you think?”

“It’s…it’s good.” That was tantamount to a fist pump, and Natasha knew it. She threw her arms around him and gave him a hug. Bucky sank into the embrace and Steve had to sigh. He knew how that felt, just the need to hold onto her and let her hold him in return. “A lot of people are doing a lot of things, they don’t need to be doing for me.”

Natasha met Steve’s gaze over Bucky’s shoulder. “That’s up to them, isn’t it?” Her quiet question resonated. “If they want to help you, let them.”

Steve gave her a small smile of encouragement. “Listen to the lady, Buck. She’s usually right.”

That eyebrow went up, daring him for the comment, but Steve stood by it.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “All right Natalia.” He set her down. “Go make nice with Stevie.” He gave her a gentle push, and it looked for a moment like he was going to smack her ass, only this time she caught his thumb and forefinger and twisted. Instead of pain, Bucky laughed.

“I really hate the ass slap,” she told him.

“You let me do it once,” Bucky teased, but the grin on his face said that her restraining him delighted him far more.

“Once isn’t blanket permission,” she reminded him, but the corner of her mouth curved into a smile. “Do it again, and I’m going to actually hurt you.”

Bucky scoffed. “You’d have to spar with me, and you won’t do that yet.”

It was Steve’s turn to bite back a smile. As plays went, it wasn’t exactly subtle. Bucky had wanted her to spar with him since Switzerland.

“Hmm…” She released his hand, then laughed when he snaked the arm around her and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Trying to butter me up?”

“Nah, doll. When I want to do that, you’ll know it. Now off you go…” he gave her another gentle nudge, but he didn’t go for the butt smack this time, and Steve offered Nat his arm. When she slid hers around his, he relaxed. Bucky met his gaze over her head and when her back was turned he mouthed _Good luck._

Yeah, Steve hoped he didn’t need luck for this.

Arm in arm, he guided her to the elevator and practiced what he wanted to say next in his head. _Be honest. Be her partner. Talk to her. Tell her what’s in your head. Get her out of hers. Make one of those plans like you used to…at least then you’ll be on the same page_.

And what had Bucky said back in Switzerland?

_Don’t take away her choices._

All solid advice.

When he stopped at the common room, she gave him a questioning look but let him guide her out regardless.

“Are you tired?” Because he didn’t want to drag her into a long discussion if she needed the rest. She just hadn’t been sleeping or eating well, and it had been gnawing on him. The fact she’d slept the night before after the pillow fight had gone a long way toward alleviating his worry—before he brought up houses.

 _One thing at a time, Rogers_.

“I think I should be asking you that,” she said as she loosened his hold on her in the kitchen. “You were the one running an op today.”

“It wasn’t as bad as the oil derrick, but I’d say slightly worse than the Lemurian Star.” Opening the large freezer, he shifted items around and then pulled out the pint of pistachio Friday had said was there. Sure enough, she was right. The date was still good on it, maybe Tony had stocked it before everything happened in Lagos and later Geneva? Either way, he had it.

“Why worse than the Lemurian Star? Because you didn’t have a whole STRIKE team?” Then her eyes lit up a little when he held up the ice cream, then pulled out a spoon. “What are you up to Rogers?”

“Can’t a guy just do something nice for his girl?” He countered, enjoying the way she tracked the ice cream with her gaze. Clint had not been wrong. Natasha Romanoff held captive by pistachio ice cream.

It was adorable.

“Sure,” she told him amiably, happily plucking the pint from his hand and taking the spoon. “But you seem to always be the man with the plan.”

The tension seemed to just pop in that moment, all his earlier worry draining off. Of course he knew how to talk to Nat. She was Nat. They’d had a thousand of these little exchanges in the middle of the night, first thing in the morning, on a mission, under cover, and even on the run.

“Well, you just might be right about that.” He winked, then eyed her clothing. She was in workout gear, but the top was thin and sleeveless, leaving her arms bare. Shrugging out of his jacket, he said, “How do you feel about the roof?”

“Are we talking metaphorically or emotionally?” She hadn’t popped open the lid on the ice cream yet.

“I’m talking physically,” he said, chuckling as he grabbed a bottle of wine, two glasses, and then held out a hand to her.

“Wine and ice cream, Cap…are you trying to seduce me?”

Heat rushed to his face, but he held her gaze. “Is it working?”

“Maybe.” Her smirk dared him. “You’ve definitely got some style going on.”

Hand in hand, he lead her up to the roof. The elevator opened up on a little courtyard area that once included a swimming pool, but it was covered at the moment. Steve chose the roof over the observation deck because there were fewer lights up here, the view of the city was spectacular, and even with the chill—Tony had chair warmers and a fire pit.

He got her settled on one of the loungers, turned on the heater, and then got the fire going before he opened the wine. The comfortable silence blanketed them, yet he remained aware of her studying him. “You know,” he said as he prodded the wood. “It used to make me nervous when you did that.”

“Watch you?” She didn’t even have to ask him what he referenced. It was that watchfulness and observation that told her so much about the people around her, and yet—sometimes he wondered if it was also what kept her at a distance, too.

“Pretty much. I thought for a while that you didn’t approve of me or found me lacking.” He angled the back of the fire bit to focus the heat in their direction before finally joining her and sitting with his knees bracketing hers while he opened the wine bottle.

“You fascinated me,” she told him. “You were a man out of time, and your reactions were never what people expected them to be.”

“But you were alive in the 40s…was I familiar?” Okay, that was fishing a little. But he was genuinely curious.

“I was alive in 40s Russia, I only went to the States for one mission in 47, and I wasn’t there that long before I had to return and finish at the Red Room.”

He soaked up every nugget of the past she would share with him, even those drenched in blood and darkness. “New York?”

“Los Angeles.” A quick grin, and she peeled open the ice cream as he poured the wine into the glasses. “I was after one of our errant Red Room students.”

Realization crystalized. “Tanya?”

A little nod, and a momentary sadness glimmered in her eyes. “She’d been caught, and turned—or so the mission debriefing stated. There was an SSR agent she reportedly answered to, so my assignment was to locate and neutralize both.”

Steve couldn’t hide his frown as she took a bite of the pistachio and watched him from beneath her lashes.

“You didn’t ask me up here to talk about that…”

“I didn’t ask you up here to not talk about it either.” Her past was hers. He couldn’t change it and neither could she. At no point in their friendship or partnership had she ever pretended to be anything other than who she was. If she’d killed an SSR agent, it was what she’d had to do _then_. Then the Red Room held her leash, Ivan controlled her, and they were conditioning her for future missions.

She literally had no choices then.

“If you want to tell me, I’ll listen. If you don’t…I won’t push.” He held out the wine glass to her, and she brushed her fingers over his before taking it.

Studying him, she hesitated. The hesitation gave him pause, but he didn’t change his expression or look away from her. He meant it; he’d listen to anything she wanted to tell him. “Maybe another time?” she asked finally.

“Whenever you want or never if you want,” he told her freely. Then he took a sip of the wine. She mirrored his gesture before setting it aside and returning to the ice cream. Every time she took a bite, she looked a little younger, a little more carefree. The firelight played beautifully with the shadows of her face and teased the highlights in her hair that he could swear were little streaks of gold amidst the rich red.

“Nat,” he said, then waited for her to meet his gaze again. “I’m sorry. I was an ass this morning. I ambushed you with the houses and then when you didn’t react like I thought you would—well I didn’t behave well. I’m sorry about that.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten defensive,” she told him, and when she pressed her knee to his, he smiled “I just—I don’t know why you all of a sudden wanted to do this. You’re planning for something that may never happen.”

“I’m planning for what I _want_ to happen.” Keeping his gaze on her, he blew out a breath. “I’ve spent…every minute since I came out of the ice wondering why the hell I was here, why couldn’t I have woken up then? Even if I'd lost everything, I’d do it again. Putting the plane in the ice, it was the _right_ thing to do. Then I saw Peggy again, and she…she was still amazingly beautiful, you know, but she had lived this life and she was in this completely different place. Kind of like when I met her. We really only ever had this short window where we were on the same page.”

He hadn’t intended the confession, but now that the words poured out of him, he had to get them out.

 _Be honest_.

This was him being honest.

“So I started to accept, this was my new reality. The _future_ , SHIELD—you and the Avengers.” He took a long swallow of the wine. “Then little by little, you coaxed me into this world. You were right there, teasing me, daring me, and helping me. But I still…a part of me still held back. I didn’t want to get attached. Then SHIELD went down and—well you were there for all of it.” He’d told her a lot of this on the quinjet. “I told you what you did for me, and I told you why I had never made a move…”

“Clint,” she answered, around another bite of pistachio.

Then Ultron, and then Bruce, and then, and then…

“I made a lot of choices in my life because of the past, because of what I thought was right or what needed to be done. I don’t make them for what I want. It’s time to change that.”

Natasha frowned. “You want to buy a house, because you want to have a plan.”

“With you,” he added. “I want to have a plan _with you_. I know you don’t want to plan for tomorrow or the day after. I know you live in the moment, and I’m okay with that.” Or he could learn to be. “I can plan for us for tomorrow.” It was a gamble. “I want to do that for us…for you, for me and for Bucky. I want you to have a home that’s _yours_ and a place where it can just be us, no team, no Stark…”

He broke off and shook his head. If he brought Stark into the conversation, it would muddy the waters. They needed to talk about Tony at some point, but not tonight.

“…no government, just…us. We go in there and we’re Steve, Nat and Bucky.” It sounded a little lame to his ears now, but… “And the thing is we don’t have to decide it immediately or even tomorrow. But I want it to be something we know we have. Something we can work toward—because the truth is Nat, I feel like I've waited forever for you and I will keep waiting forever for you.” The moment he said it, he realized how true it was. “I’ve had more than a window where it was you and me on the same page, I’ve had years. I’ve never had a better partner than you are. I want to take that window and turn it into a whole house, where we can have all of it.”

She held the spoon in her mouth, studying him and when he finally finished, she lowered it. “I don’t want to disappoint you. Ever. And sometimes I worry that I’m not that girl, the one you can make those plans around. You keep bending for me Steve, what if it becomes too much in your hypothetical some day?”

“Then I work on my flexibility training.” Determination flooded him. _Be her partner_. “What makes us an unbeatable team is when we work together even when we don’t agree.”

“It sounds so easy,” she admitted, and then she offered him a spoonful of the pistachio. She’d devoured nearly half of it, and now she was offering it to him. He took the bite, and while it wasn’t his favorite flavor, he’d take whatever she would share with him.

“It does, but it’s not,” he confirmed. It would never be _easy_. It could be _right_ , and it could be _perfect_ , but easy wasn’t in their vocabulary. “The world is never going to let us have easy, not unless the three of us just pack up and disappear. But we can’t outrun the past, and you wouldn’t run away even if I offered it to you.”

“In all fairness, Cap…Steve…you don’t want to runaway.”

“I’m never going to say never where you’re concerned.” Did he want to stay here and back up Tony? Yes. Did he want to protect the other Avengers and see the change to the Accords through? Yes. Would there always be another battle, or as Bucky had said, it always ended in a fight? That was true, too.

But he could and would put Natasha first.

She fed him another spoonful, then took a bite for herself. “I’m worried you’re giving me too much power.” The observation might have surprised some people, but not him. Nat worried about him. She worried about all of them, but she guarded it so closely that sometimes it was easy to overlook. He needed to be better about that.

“I told you, I’m with you ‘til the end of the line. I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not going to lose me just because we have a fight. I can’t promise we’re not ever going to disagree. You’re a pretty stubborn woman.”

A laugh slipped out of her, and he grinned. _Talk to her. Tell her what’s in your head._

“You’re stronger than all of us combined,” he reminded her. “You don’t need me for any of that. I know you can survive whatever life throws at you. But I want to be the one right there, I want to be the one who can help and will help and that you will never doubt that I’ll help.”

That uncertainty. No. He couldn’t stand they idea she might be uncertain of him—that he’d given her room to doubt.

_Don’t take away her choices._

“I want you to know that even if you can do something on your own, even if you’re a big girl and you can take it—you don’t have to. You have a choice.” When she took his extended hand, he pulled her over to sit against his lap, balancing her on one thigh and narrowing the distance between them. “You will always have a choice—and I promise even when I hate something, even if I get…”

“Captain America’s disappointed in you face?” The description didn’t do him any favors, but he couldn’t fault it.

_Tell her what’s in your head. Get her out of hers._

“Sure, let’s call it that. Even then—I’m on your side. I’ll back your play. Even if I don’t like it, and even if I’d wish you’d do it differently—and even if I argue with you.” The last part was important. “Partners?”

Stretching over, she put the mostly eaten pistachio ice cream pint to the side, then settled back to wrap her arms around his neck. He spread his fingers wide against her back, even more content to just hold her. “I’d like that…I miss being there and having your back.”

God did he ever miss her being there. “I do, too. We’re going to figure this out.”

“Until then, we have to live in the now…and the now is…complicated.” A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “I want to train the kid.”

“I already figured that out,” he promised her. “And based on what I saw, you’re going to be really good at it. I don’t like that Tony kind of ambushed us with it but…”

“But he needed help,” she pointed out. “It’s a big thing for Tony to ask.”

True.

“Steve…” She frowned. “Isaiah has some jobs for me to do, and I planned on taking them.”

Planned on…had she changed her mind? “Okay?”

“I need—I burned a lot of money the last few months, and I need to replenish my funds,” she offered up a financial reason. So it was mercenary work. He knew she’d taken jobs on the side before, but he’d never asked. He’d kind of assumed they were like her work taking out human traffickers, but maybe not.

She picked at a button on his shirt, loosening it then tucking it back into place. Then she seemed to steel herself with a deep breath before locking her gaze on his. “One of them is for a kidnapped kid, another is for human traffickers, and the third one is to act as a middleman for stolen artwork.”

That didn’t sound too bad. “Okay.”

“My question is how much of the details do you want? And how much would you like plausible deniability for?”

“I want all the details,” he told her. “And can I help?”

 _Make one of those plans like you used to…at least then you’ll be on the same page_.

Surprise flickered across her face, followed by the loveliest smile. It hurt to think she’d had reason to doubt him, but the fact he’d managed to prove otherwise settled the unease.

“I don’t have all of them yet, Isaiah is sending it. In fairness, the human trafficking case is a lead from a contact at the FBI.” That startled him. “Isaiah vets these, and it’s legit. Beaumont won’t ever see me in person, conflict of interest. But they’ve been trying to get actionable evidence for months and aren’t getting anywhere.”

“Is this one of those cases where you let yourself get taken and beat up to find everything?” Because he wasn’t entirely sure he was up for that soon soon, and he tightened his grip on her a little.

“Maybe,” she answered him, not avoiding his gaze. “I know you hate it…”

“Hate…everyone who touches you like that and hate that anyone made you think it was okay to inflict that kind of pain on yourself even if you can and will heal.” He wanted it out there. “I’m _never_ going to be okay with that.”

Her mouth twisted, and he could almost see the retreat.

“So if we can find an alternate method, can we try that first?” Was it too much to ask?

She tilted her head from side to side. “I guess we could get creative.”

The relief was so profound, he could have wept. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t put herself in that position, but if there was even a chance of avoiding it, he’d hold on with both hands. “I like creative.”

Then he took advantage of her closeness and kissed her, pouring his thanks and adoration into it. When he finally leaned back, she was a little breathless.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me to be creative on all options now.” The tease made him laugh.

“I can live with that. Do you know when we’re going to have to go? How long we might be gone?”

The gentle stroke of her nail along his neck sent a chill through him. “I don’t know if either of you can go yet.” That gave him pause. “You have the team, and James has his pardon. So I might be winging this solo…”

He wanted to yell, and tell her no way in hell. She wasn’t wrong about their commitments. But…

“And honestly, I don’t know yet. One of the jobs is pretty urgent, so as soon as I know, I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t leave without telling us,” he said, the words an order, but his tone a request.

“I won’t. I promised James I wouldn’t do anything without telling either of you.”

Licking his lips, he wrestled with the next question, but he couldn’t keep assuming or pretending not to feel something. “Why do you need the money, Tasha?” It wasn’t a subject they’d ever discussed. She seemed relatively well off, and at the moment Tony was paying for everything. “The pardon has meant they’re unfreezing my accounts. Buck’s going to get a sizeable chunk…maybe we can help?” And please, please, please don’t let her think he was stepping on her plans.

“That’s really sweet, but this isn’t about bills…though I do have some of those.” She leaned her head back and then looked up at the sky. The air was definitely brisk, but the wind had all but died and the fire kept half of him warm, while she warmed the other half.

“Isaiah is my attorney because I saved his life a long time ago—he may or may not have had mafia ties, and he may or may not have had a contract taken out on him by another member of his family. When he and his brother were caught in the crossfire, I may or may not have intervened. Isaiah survived, and he is an exceptional lawyer. He took apart the organization piece by piece. It was really a thing of beauty.” The admiration in her voice couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

She seemed to consider her next words carefully.

“But he wanted to repay me for his second chance even though I never thought he owed me anything. But he’s a really good attorney, and he’s really good at research. So he helped me set up funds, non-traceable, never tied to me. He took care of my safe house purchases, maintained the web—it all flows through him including potential jobs and he knows the kinds of jobs I’ll never take. He also knows the jobs most likely to get my attention, and he makes sure they aren’t traps.”

The thought sent ice down his spine. What had she said about going after her? Make it a puzzle, and hide a trap within another to bring her to them? The hell of it was, she knew all this about herself and took precautions for it.

“Among all of these tasks—he also manages my estate. Steve when I talk about having red in my ledger, I don’t just mean the blood on my hands. I mean the lives that I wrecked. The children whose parents never came home, the damage done by more than just weapons, but the kind of catastrophic ripple effect that occurs when you burn down a children’s hospital and kill everyone inside of it.”

Not once did she look away from him, and his stomach churned but he nodded slowly.

“Isaiah directs money into funds for places—for people—that I’ve hurt. It’s not ever going to bring back what they lost, but maybe it can still do a little good. So that’s why I need money, I’m getting low and I’ve redirected a lot of funds into trusts that will be dispersed if something happens to me…”

“Clint’s kids—his family.” It wasn’t even a question. Nat loved them. “You have a failsafe, if you miss a check in or fail a mission, Isaiah takes care of your family.”

“Yes. I added two more trusts to it…before we went to Russia.”

Him and Bucky.

“Don’t be mad,” she told him, and he stared at her, agog.

“How the hell could I be mad at you?” He shook his head. “You were preparing for something terrible, to face something terrible, and you were making plans to take care of me and Buck if something happened to you?”

“Someone had to,” she said with a little shrug like it wasn’t a big deal. But it was a huge deal. “Nothing’s ever a guarantee, and all your money was frozen. There was a solid fifty-fifty I wasn’t coming back. I needed to know you would be okay.”

He would never be okay if he lost her. Never. “You never fail to take my breath away,” he said.

She dropped her gaze as she smiled, and there was something so open and wondering in it, she really did take his breath away.

“Okay,” he exhaled. “So we get jobs from Isaiah, check. We let him handle the funds, check. You trust him, check.”

“Which means you can trust him, too. I’ll tell him he can answer your questions. If I’m gone too long for a job, I’ll make sure you can at least follow me.”

Damn straight he’d be following her. “If I’m not already with you.”

She gave him a look, but he didn’t back down from it. Yes, he’d noticed how carefully she’d avoided including him. Even giving him the excuses that yes, may end up being valid reasons he couldn’t go.

“Nat—as you keep reminding me, you’re a fugitive. But the only way I have your back is if I’m actually there to have your back.”

“We can’t always be there for each other,” she said, then swallowed. “Like I can’t be there now.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean we ever give up trying.” If she believed nothing else about him, she had to believe this. They had to or they were going to be in this position over and over again. So he asked again, “Partners?” 

One hand on his shoulder, she stared at him for a long time. This was a huge decision for her. Maybe not as big as the one that brought her back in the front door of the Tower when she could have disappeared—when he’d quite frankly been terrified she would disappear. But it was still huge. Maybe one of the biggest asks he’d ever made of her.

“Partners,” she whispered, and it was like all the air went out of her. Arm looped around her, he pulled her close and tipped her chin with his free hand. Breathing her in, he pressed his lips to hers. As desperate and hungry as the need in him began, it shifted as he savored her closeness, the taste of pistachio and the hint of wine in her mouth. The dry with the sweet. Just like her.

“Thank you,” he whispered in between the moments as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss.

“You’re welcome,” she chuckled, then nipped his lower lip. “Have I mentioned how much I like your beard?”

“Once or twice,” he teased, the nuzzled the corner of her mouth. “Haven’t shaved it yet…”

“Do you want to?” She sucked on his tongue before he could answer, and the need arcing through him threatened to short circuit his brain... She shifted, straddling his lap with one knee on either side of his thighs as she leaned into him.

When she finally let him have some air, the scrape of her teeth against his pulse point sent his thoughts scattering. He tried to answer her question, but he wasn’t sure if it came out as garbled to her as it did to him.

“What?” The too innocent note in that sultry voice sent another electric pulse through his system. Everything in him was leaning toward her

“I’m don’t know, what was the question?”

Then she leaned away taking all that delicious heat and softness with her as she laughed. “Do you want to shave your beard?”

“Not even a little,” he assured her, then swooped back into kiss her and swallowed the laughter bubbling out of her—a sound he would never tire of hearing.


	10. Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sweet calm before the storm clouds gather

**Chapter Ten**

**Angel**

**Natasha**

 

 

The wine was gone, as well as the melted remains of the pistachio and Nat was drunk, but it wasn’t on sugar or alcohol. They stayed on the roof until the fire had burned down and the goosebumps on her skin were more from the cold than from his kisses. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world, coiling around him, exploring every kind of kiss. The long, slow, and deep kind that left her toes curling inside her shoes. The sweet, nibbling, and experimental kind that punctuated their words. The teasing, biting, and dangling with laughter as their noses bumped or his beard tickled.

Then there were the little hickeys she left on his throat, just one, to satisfy the urge to do it. Then a second. When she bit down on his pulse point, he’d gone so rigid beneath her, and then sighed. The sigh alone had been worth it as he clasped her hips and melted against her.

The drunken part was when she acknowledged how wonderful it all felt, and they were still dressed, and it was too damn cold to take off anything—and she didn’t care. Even rolling her hips to tease his erection through all their layers of clothing. The more wondrous part, Steve never lost control. He didn’t once try to flip her over or push her down or overwhelm her. All that power and strength wrapped around her, biting into her hips—there would be bruises, and she kind of couldn’t wait to see the finger impressions against her skin—and not once did she catalog how to take him down.

All she wanted was to be closer.

With her hand cupped around his nape as he nuzzled her lips and teased her mouth open for another slow, languorous kiss, she couldn’t miss the flutter of his pulse. It raced, then steadied, then raced again and in between each loving lave of his tongue, she felt more than heard the long gulp of air, the way he filled his chest, and the slow—almost deliberately slow exhale.

He was controlling his breathing. In between every desperate kiss, every sweeping caress, and every flex of his arms as he held her, ground her against him, and moved with her, he fought to maintain control. To keep himself steady. To rein himself in…it was beyond impressive.

Drawing back from the latest kiss, she studied him through heavy-lidded eyes. The sense of being overwhelmed absent in the face of this drunken stupor she languished within.

“You okay?” His voice was rough. Deep, fuck me rough, and it sent shivers skating up her spine. At no point in the years of knowing him had she ever heard him sound like this.

“You’re holding back,” she said, breathing him in even as she caught her breath. Her heart wasn’t frantic, but it was definitely unsteady. In all the best ways, really, because straddling his lap and curled up against him, she didn’t have to focus on staying on her feet or maintaining her distance or even her awareness.

That reality crashed in on her and she blinked slowly.

“Not going to overwhelm you,” he murmured. “Enjoying this way too much to see that look in your eyes again.”

The calculating one, the one where she pictured all the ways she could take him apart… She swallowed.

“Shh,” he murmured, sliding his hands up her back, somehow he’d slid them under his jacket—which she was still wearing and may never give back. “No I don’t like to see that remote look, the one where you lose yourself, but that’s not the one I’m trying to avoid.”

Confused, she tried to engage her sluggish mind but it was all lizard brain at this point. It wanted, and what it wanted was him and the rest of the world could just fade away. She was content right where she was—well, James could stay, but he was safe on Steve’s floor, and that was enough at the moment.

The soft chuckle rumbling out of his chest reminded her of a lion’s purr and she settled more firmly against his thighs, legs stretched out to wrap around him. It was at once the most intimate and yet utterly innocent their embrace had been from the moment he’d tugged her over to his lap—however long ago that had been. The shadows of the gradually dying fire danced over his face.

Steve exhaled a breath, then pressed a kiss to the corner of her eye. The brush of his beard sent another wave of shivers through her and she stretched her spine, arching up to rub her cheek against his face. When he carded his fingers through her hair, the light scrape of his blunted nails against her scalp made her want to purr herself.

What had he been saying?

“What look?” She managed to form two words and it felt like a major accomplishment. The buzz in her senses left her mind hazy and floating. It was the oddest sensation, an almost daring loss of control, and yet it didn’t leave her scrambling. Steve looked even better, his pupils blown and his expression blissed out. Languid heat rolled through her blood and she curled her fingers into the hair at his nape. It had gotten longer, less military and far more relaxed.

It was a _good_ look on him.

He groaned, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Angel eyes, I don’t want to pull you out of the moment.”

“Not really sure you could.” But she grinned at the nickname. Steve usually just called her Nat, she’d always kind of liked the possessiveness and exasperation he could infuse into that single syllable. Romanoff was for when she irked him, or challenged him, or maybe just when he needed distance. It was definitely why she used Rogers. Cap was a little more of an endearment, but Steve…Steve was her friend, and the guy she could go to at two in the morning just so she wouldn’t be alone.

“Hmm,” he murmured, tugging her closer but instead of a kiss he pressed her head to his collarbone and then she buried her face against his throat. This was definitely nice, and it was a vulnerable area of his body, she should stay right here and make sure nothing happened to it. “You’re almost boneless, I could get used to this.”

“That’s cause all the boner went with you.” The quip danced off her tongue without a second thought, and then she heard it as if from a distance. A giggle escaped, then another, and another. Steve’s arms tightened around her as laughter rumbled up from deep in his chest.

“You did not just say that.”

“Oh, yes I did.” It was ridiculous and funny, and warm and did she ever have to move? Could they just stay right here in this bubble forever?

Even as their laughter settled, she didn’t move away. This close she could just feel him, smell him, and it was—peaceful. Ridiculously so. Then slowly her mind wound back a step. “What look?”

He sighed. “Yeah I didn’t think you’d let that go.”

“Not trying to be difficult,” she told him, then spread her fingers against his shirt. It had long since lost its starched and pressed appearance. So many wrinkles radiated out from where she’d gripped it, tugged on him, rubbed her hands over it. She’d slipped three buttons earlier, and she eased her fingers between the gap in his shirt and then pressed against his skin.

Hot. So hot his skin about scorched her palm, but she loved the heat radiating off his flesh. It warmed her fingers and left her itching to explore. For his part, he’d hissed out a breath when she teased from his pectoral to his shoulder. The man didn’t have a spare ounce on him. It would be a crime if she didn’t enjoy the feel and look of him so much, and yet it wasn’t his looks or even his physicality—though that was definitely a plus—that left her wanting so much.

“I really like this,” she murmured. “Just…being here.” It had been a long week…a long month. Fuck it. It had been a _long_ year. She could argue it had been a long life, but she tried not to indulge in self-pity.

“Me too, Angel. Me too.” The endearment should have sounded saccharine. Too sweet. Too not her. But like James’ Doll, the Angel just rolled through her and settled into all the little cracked and broken pieces like it belonged. She was in so deep, too deep, and the best plan in the world would be a clean, quick extraction. But she made no such moves, floating happily in the languid place they’d found.

He hadn’t been angry about her training the kid. He’d listened. He’d asked. He’d pushed, and he’d pulled. But not once had he shied away from her, even when the dark and gory bits tried to slip out. But the wildest part was he wouldn’t let her go, and she didn’t want him to, either.

“Steve?” She breathed his name against his throat.

“I’m right here,” he reminded her.

“What look?” It seemed like she should know the answer. That if she took some time, and turned it over, she would be able to summarize it beautifully. Yet, she didn’t want to have to dig herself out of this cocoon to do the work. Lazy Widow. Sloppy. Very sloppy.

_Suck it, Madame B._

Tension tried to invade her lax muscles, but Steve ran his hand up and down her spine. It was like being petted, and it dispersed the little bubbles of unease before they could even form.

“The look that says you have to get as far away from me as possible,” he admitted. “The one that says you’re slipping away and everywhere I try to hold onto you turns into gossamer and slips right through my fingers.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised, stroking his chest gently. “Warm.”

Another laugh rumbled out of him. “So all I have to do to hold onto you is take you somewhere cold?”

“Pfft, you don’t like the cold.” That was right, he didn’t. “Should go inside, so you’re not cold.”

“I’m not cold,” he said, something dark and sweet licking over the words. “I’m never cold when I’m with you.”

Sweet. Too sweet. That level of affection was dangerous. Nothing should ever be allowed to be more important than the mission—she shunted off the line of thought, as if she’d pressed a mute button. It was too noisy and irritating. Her eyes drifted closed, and she just settled there. It was like Venice, only better. She’d been so tired in Venice, so tired. And he’d just held her, even when she hadn’t wanted to be held.

Which wasn’t remotely true. She’d enjoyed it too much and it was a dangerous thing to let herself enjoy. Look at her now. Boneless, curling against him, and completely not on guard, back exposed where anyone could—Steve stroked his hand down her back against, the strength in those fingers turning her muscles to butter.

“Going to sleep on me, Angel?” His low voice stroked over her just like his hand.

“S’nice,” she murmured. “’hy Angel?”

“Because your eyes were the first thing I ever noticed about you,” he whispered. “Angel Eyes fits, but Angel is perfect.”

“’m not an angel.”

He scoffed. “You’re a warrior angel, Natasha. Don’t you know they weren’t all cherubs and soft baby faces?”

Hmm, she turned the idea over in her head. “Never went t’church. Religion wasn’t a thing.” Not even a thing she really understood, it was kind of like comfort food for some people, so what did she know? Steve was warm, and beneath the scent of plain soap, the dryer sheets someone had used on his shirt, and the rich leather of his jacket, all she could smell was him.

At some point her lashes grew too heavy. It was a fight to keep them open, a sparring match she was losing.

“There are all different kinds of angels. Guardian angels, helper angels, messengers, angels of mercy and peace—and then there are the Archangels. Michael. Ariel. Haniel. Uriel. Gabriel.” He listed them off like old friends. “They’re divine entities, but they’re all warriors. They’re protectors who walks beside us no matter the challenge, they lend us courage, and strength, they rush ahead to fight our battles and clear the path. Sometimes they just come into our lives to remind us we’re stronger, more capable and resourceful than we realize. Other times, they give us the swift kick in the ass we need.”

“Sounds nice.” It did. Really nice. Someone who would fight for you, help you, be at your side and support you.

“It is,” he said, a smile wreathing his words. “I used to think I understood it, but I didn’t—not really. Not until you, Angel.”

She tried to open her eyes, she tried, but they wouldn’t. They were so heavy, and they were watering. She pressed tighter to him.

His voice was near a whisper, and she almost missed it, “You’re my warrior, Natasha. My angel.”

The feeling burning in her chest spread out. She swallowed, then burrowed closer as if she could find her way beneath his skin.

“Go to sleep, Angel. I got you.”

She rebelled against the suggestion, curling her fingers. “I thought we’d…”

“We have time,” he whispered against her hair. “And I want this to be right for you. Call this a first date, Natasha. Our first date. We’re going to have more.” Oh that sounded nice. He was so much better at this dating thing than he'd let on. “But it’s been a long day, and you need to sleep.”

Some part of her was certain he kept talking. His warm voice lulled her to sleep. It was a ridiculous weakness to let him exploit, and she just shut the door on that voice because letting him felt right. She stirred at some point. Her position had shifted and his arm was under her leg, and her head still tucked against his shoulder with her face at his neck.

Still safe.

She pressed a kiss to the skin then settled again even as her brain took a lazy catalog of the motions.

He was walking.

There was a ding.

Elevator doors opened.

Then closed.

The sensation of falling, but safely.

Then another ding.

The light beyond her eyelids shifted from shadows to muted to shadows again.

“Hey,” James’ voice drifted by, a passing caress. “She okay?”

“She’s perfect,” Steve rumbled. “And asleep, so shh.”

A soft chuckle. More movement. Then he was setting her down, and she protested when the heat rolled away.

“Shh.” He stilled her with a hand on her cheek. Getting her eyes open took a minute, but the gentle manhandling made her smile. Steve peeled away her jacket, then James had her leggings. Her tank top vanished. Then her sports bra. The lack of restriction made her sigh, but it was cold, and she curled her legs up.

“Ah-ah,” James chided. “Hang on. Here. Grabbed one of yours.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her. Dammit, her brain was sluggish to respond. Then she was sitting up and the softest cotton slid over her. It was warmer.

“There we go.” Steve again, and then there was more rustling. “I’ll be right back.”

She wanted to protest his leaving, but the bed dipped. Oh, she was in a bed. Some part of her had noticed that already. Blankets came over her, and there was warmth along her side. A brush of a kiss to her forehead, and she thought she’d turned to look at him, but her eyes were still closed.

Still, she kept track of the sounds around her. Movement, then the hush of a door closing. “Friday sleep mode, please,” Steve said, his voice a bare whisper coming closer. “And good night.”

“Good night, Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes.” Friday whispered, too. It was sweet.

Then the bed dipped and Steve was there. He lined up against her back, a big spoon. And a hand tangled with hers—James maybe. She was rapidly losing track, just sinking deeper and deeper.

It shouldn’t be this easy to let go, to shut off. It wasn’t safe to be vulnerable. The fact she couldn’t get her eyes open, all it took was one careless moment, and a sharpened object could penetrate her kidney…

“You worked it out?” James pitched his voice low.

“Yeah, we’re good. Now hush before you wake her up,” Steve chided him, his words a bare whisper but they were so close she couldn’t miss them. His arm over her stomach and his chest against her back—no one was stabbing her with anything. Hell, she was floating. Just drifting. Surrounded and warm, and her awareness was sinking fast.

“You used to be less bossy,” James yawned, and if she could have surfaced at all, she would have laughed.

“We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” The droll response were the last words she heard before she blinked her eyes open to find the dimming glass had brightened gradually. The sun was up, and she was still securely sandwiched between two warm bodies. It should have been suffocating—her legs tangled with James’, Steve still pressed at her back, the soft huff of his breathing tickling her nape. It was nice, really—nice.

Awareness tickled her, and she glanced up to find a pair of cool blue eyes watching her, a smirk on his lips.

“Shut up,” she told him without preamble and his smile widened. A part of her wanted to go back to sleep, the rest of her—bladder included—wanted her to get up. She was sore, from head to toe, her muscles protesting pleasantly from her day spent in the gym and training room. She’d expected an entirely different kind of soreness this morning, but all she and Steve had done was make out, and it was…nice.

Better than nice.

It had been ridiculously fun without any expectations or demands.

Who knew?

Her lips twitched and James’ soft chuckle told her that dopey feeling had to be showing on her face. She gave him a little shove, and he caught her hand, then lifted it to his lips for a kiss.

“It’s nice,” he told her.

“What is?” She wrestled with the floaty feeling, and the warmth suffusing her. How did people control their expressions when all they wanted to do was smile? It was ridiculous.

“You’re blushing,” James rumbled in a sleep-heavy voice. “It’s nice.”

Blushing was a physiological reaction to stress, the kind of reaction she’d been trained to overcome. “Shut up,” she repeated with far less force and heat.

Nonplussed, he kissed her palm. “Not a chance, doll.” Despite the teasing note in his voice, his eyes were perfectly serious. “It’s better, Natalia.”

He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t lessen the discomfort at realizing she couldn’t quite contain her smile. That was not going to work for her. She had to fix those reactions before she slipped too far. They couldn’t afford a…

A chime overhead broke in and she glanced up. It wasn’t the phones, but really, what now? “Yes, Friday?”

“My apologies, Ms. Romanoff, but Boss is in the elevator and needs to be admitted to the floor.”

“Right now?”

James made a face, and pushed upward. Behind her Steve groaned.

“Yes, Red, right now. We need to talk.” It was the urgent snap in Tony’s voice prodded her up, and Steve lifted his head any trace of sleep erased.

“Let him in, Friday.” Steve shoved the blanket back, disentangling from her even as she clambered right off the end of the bed.

“I need to pee,” she issued the warning because she was getting the bathroom—wait—they were in Steve’s room. Not hers. Okay, change of plans. Cause she also needed to brush her teeth. She left Steve’s room and diverted across their sitting room towards hers. Tony opened his mouth and she held up a finger. “Not a word.”

“But…”

“Nope. Five minutes.”

Then she slipped into her own bathroom, relieved her bladder, then washed up, and brushed her teeth before pulling her hair up into a ponytail. Steve’s borrowed shirt hung off her comfortably, but she still grabbed a pair of shorts before she padded back out to find the guys in the kitchen, arms folded, and glaring at each other.

Yeah, she needed more coffee for this.

The coffee maker hissed, and the scent drew her like a siren, as she paused first to give James a kiss, then Steve, and turned to find Tony eyeing her expectantly. With a smirk, she closed the distance, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t press your luck,” she reminded him quietly before retreating to the counter and leaning against it. Then mirroring their poses she folded her arms.

“So…what’s new, Shellhead?”

“I don’t know Red, why don’t you tell me about an FBI agent named Eric Beaumont?” The challenge in his tone and the intensity vibrating off him was one step away from full meltdown.

“What happened Tony?”

“Just tell me about Beaumont.” It wasn’t quite a snap, but it was definitely unfriendly.

She studied him. There was a gleam of perspiration round his hairline. His eyes were a little bloodshot, more like he’d been dragged from sleep than he’d spent hours up. There was a subtle, almost not there, shake to his hands. Something was definitely wrong.

“Tony, what happened?” Steve took a turn, his arms dropped and his expression sober.

“Nick Fury happened, so again, who the hell is Eric Beaumont?”

Nick. She considered all the ways Nick could be involved. To the best of her knowledge, she’d never brought Beaumont up to him. That had been outside the parameters of her assignment, and she’d edited it from her reports. It had never come up in discussion, but that didn’t mean Nick hadn’t figured it out later.

“He’s a friend,” she said, choosing the word carefully. By the slimmest of margins, perhaps, but the word applied. He trusted her to get the job done, and she trusted him to give her accurate information. It was about as far as it would ever go—especially now. The coffee had finished so she turned to reach for the pot. James already had the mugs ready, and four cups took pretty much all the coffee they’d made.

“A friend. You’re friends with an FBI agent.” Tony seemed to be tossing the idea around.

“I’m friends with lots of people, Tony. Even billionaires and aliens.” Keeping it flip, and light, she passed him a mug before starting another pot to brew.

“Tony, just tell us what happened and got you down here agitated.” Bless Steve’s patience, because at the moment Nat wasn’t sure she had hers. She’d been enjoying her little semi-languid existential crisis before Tony had charged in, and she really didn’t want to talk about Nick.

“Fury called Clint yesterday, it was after we left. Clint called me this morning after he did some digging. There’s a rumor circulating that Beaumont’s been compromised.”

Nat glanced over her shoulder after she turned the coffee maker back on, then cradled her cup in her hand. For his part, James just waited, his coffee in hand.

“Compromised how?” Steve focused on Tony, and after the night before, he at least had an idea of who Beaumont was even if she hadn’t gone into great detail.

Tony sighed, his gaze colliding with hers. She wasn’t upset. Getting upset rarely helped in most situations, including this one. Whatever he read off her seemed to calm him a little. “Basically Fury caught wind of a rumor rolling through the intelligence community that Beaumont is dealing with a private contractor to bring you in, Red. Fury hasn’t been able to track down the contractor or their identity, but he told Clint he has a lead. He’s also not letting it go…so at least we have him on your side.”

A lead. A contractor.

“Beaumont’s part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, Tony,” she told him, keeping her tone measured and calm. “He’s a profiler.”

“So maybe he’s profiling you, and I know you said he’s a friend, but we’ve all been betrayed by friends before.” He did not look at Steve, and while his gaze didn’t move from her, she didn’t think he was referring to her at the moment either. No, Stane had left an everlasting mark there. She and Steve were just two more that fell into the crater his betrayal had left behind.

“Why did Nick call Clint?” And why hadn't Clint called her?

“Clint said he was winding him up, but Fury is the spies’ spy. You know he has an angle.” Tony wasn’t wrong there. Flicking a look to Steve, she found him studying her.

“You think?” He asked.

She shook her head. “Not Beaumont. But someone using him, maybe. I need to make a call.”

“Who?” Tony straightened.

“Tony, let her make a call and she can tell us afterward,” Steve said even as she slipped out of the kitchen and went in search of her phone. It was in Steve’s room, apparently having been set onto a charger right next to the bed. Setting the coffee aside, she perched on the edge and activated the screen.

Two messages from Isaiah, both in code.

It took her a minute to translate them. The first was written in Italian using a base eight, it was a basic cipher, but he already knew someone had tried to hack his server. It was offline for now and would remain that way.

The second one was written in French, and he’d used a Nihilist Substitution. She needed a pencil. She opened the nightstand drawer, and found a small pad, some pencils, pulling out both, she flipped open the first page and stopped.

It was a sketch.

Just hands.

The second page had another sketch, and it was eyes—her eyes.

She turned another couple of pages before she felt like she was really intruding, but she couldn’t look away from the sketch of her staring away, it was only a profile, but she looked so sad. It hurt to stare at it.

Closing the pad, she replaced it carefully then closed the drawer. Turning away from closed doors and drawers, she finally located a small stack of sticky notes on a desk in the corner. Coffee cup in hand, she settled on the desk and starting building out the square to translate the message. It took a few minutes, but when she was done, she pursed her lips.

Isaiah had the details for Beaumont’s job, as well as Guerda’s. The museum was on hold while they finalized the funding, but there were three new burner phones waiting for her at the usual drop spot, each one programmed with numbers for her various contacts on all the jobs.

That was pretty standard. It was basically a green light.

But the last line of the code was a phone number.

She dialed it, and then put the phone to her ear. A mechanical voice requested she enter a code to retrieve her messages. A quick scan of the original message gave it to her with the words four, seven, zero, and three scattered through the text. After entering it, she wasn’t surprised to hear Isaiah’s voice.

“So, there’s a chance Beaumont may have been compromised. In all honesty, he reached out to tell me himself. His computer has been hacked, and his phone lines tapped. He dumped all of them, and he called me from a burner. The gist of it is, he won’t be able to intercede if you run into issues and he’ll understand if you choose not to do the job. I’m currently clearing out the office, and moving. You can reach me care of the old folks’ home. I’ve also dumped all the previous phones. New info will be waiting for you at the usual spots. Brush off your spycraft. What’s my opinion on this? Beaumont’s clean. Whoever is sniffing may not even have something to do with you. He’s got his own share of politics to deal with, but if you turn it down—we can live without the fee. It was a favor anyway.”

Ever pragmatic, that was Isaiah.

“I expect to hear from you by the end of the week. Don’t make me wait.”

They had a drop spot for messages when their lines weren’t secure. At the end, the message informed her it was deleting. Then the connection cut off.

It would be so nice to go back to bed. She’d been enjoying it even if she’d been arguing with herself. For once, she’d been in an argument she didn’t mind losing—or winning depending on how you looked at it.

The shuffle step at the door alerted her to Steve’s arrival before he slipped in and closed it. “Tony’s making breakfast,” he warned her.

“He’s really upset.” Tony only did that when he either had bad news to share or thought he had a difficult conversation in front of him. It gave him an element of control over something he wasn’t sure he could control.

“That would be my guess, too.” Steve pushed off the door and walked over to lean against the desk, a hand on either side of her. “What did Isaiah say?”

“Said Beaumont told him he’d been hacked and his phone lines tapped. Beaumont only ever used burners to reach out to Isaiah—same kind of system Clint and I use with Laura.” She needed to make sure Steve and James understood the system. Or maybe develop a new one just for them. That might actually be more secure. “Either way, it may have nothing to do with me, or it just might be Nick on a fishing mission.”

The more she thought about it…

She tilted her head, as she ran through the facts. Nick had wanted her to do a job—that was a little over a week before. He’d been right there on the street, like he expected her to be there. It was possible. He night have been tracking Ross and she walked right into it. Or he’d been watching the Tower. Or…Nick had his ways. Just like she had hers.

She’d turned him down.

“What are you thinking?” Steve’s sober eyes remained steadfast on her, patience etched into his expression.

“I’m thinking Nick’s doing a lot of fishing for a man who has been playing dead.” The call to Clint. Clint didn’t rattle easily. In fact, Clint hadn’t rattled at all. He’d warned Tony…

“Clint thinks he’s compromised.” She should have seen that first. Steve straightened as she slid off the desk and headed back out to the kitchen. “Tony…how often does Friday sweep the Tower for listening devices or other surveillance?”

Flipping over an omelet, Tony twisted to give her an incredulous look.

“I sweep all methods of communication regularly, Ms. Romanoff,” Friday answered for him. “It is part of my protocols. All devices that enter the Tower, or the Compound, are automatically encrypted and jammed if they involve transmitters. The packet delivery allows me to tell if any information is being siphoned. Also if any device has been cloned, I will receive dual notifications even if the same device is not present on the property. The interior of the Tower is swept via drone, as is the Compound. Though Vision does do sweeps on his own, from time to time. He considers it a meditative exercise.”

“That,” Tony finished for emphasis. “Why?”

“Because Clint called you and not me. Which means Clint must think that Nick has eyes on him somehow.”

James frowned. “Isn’t Nick Fury a friend?”

“Not really,” Tony answered, and Steve only shrugged.

“He used to be,” was Nat’s response. It was still difficult to think of him in anything but fond terms. She’d wanted his approval for too long, but he’d ultimately been nothing more than a handler. Her mistake to think it might have been more. Steve rested a hand against her back, and she leaned into him. “Whether he is or not, he always does things his way…the day I came back to the Tower, he was on the street. Wanted me to do a job.”

“What?” The omelet landed on a plate with a little plop, and Tony set the pan aside and turned off the heat. Apparently he was done cooking. “Friday didn’t show him on any of the surveillance.” Nice that he didn’t bring up her lack of previous mention.

“It was a block away, I came up through an old unused subway tunnel, let out on the street and made my way back here.” The actual location didn’t matter. Not really. “Shouldn’t have been surprised when he pulled up, the man knows how to make an entrance.”

“He wanted you to go with him?” Steve’s tone wasn’t neutral no matter how much he attempted. Across the kitchen, James took charge of the blended eggs and got the skillet heating again. Tony’s frown looked carved from granite. If there was anything Tony might like less than betrayal, it was other people trying to use him. But it might be a fifty-fifty split on that.

“Probably, I didn’t let him ask. Just told him no, and that I was retired. I did give him a hot dog, though. Maybe that’s why he’s being so nosy.”

Tony spluttered a little laugh, then grinned. “You told the Pirate King, no? Just like that?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Just like that. I didn’t want to do it. Whatever it was. I was tired…” Honestly, she didn’t trust Nick that much anymore, and whatever he had wanted would have left her far away from here.

“Well go you Red,” Tony muttered. “Go you. So the question is what does he want?”

“He might just be looking for Natalia,” James commented as he slid another finished omelet—this one neater—onto a second plate before starting another. Steve touched her shoulders lightly and gave her a little nudge to move, then walked her over to the table where he could set the omelet in front of her.

“Or he could just be trying to figure out what we’re all up to. The Avengers was his idea.” Steve didn’t sound too pleased about it.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tony added, rounding on them. “We know how he thinks—well actually Red, you do. So what do you think his actual play is?”

She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to consider all the motives the former director could be juggling. Nick played the long game on multiple fronts. Leaning back, she stared at the ceiling. They’d taken SHIELD down, something he hadn’t wanted to happen but had little say in—not when she and Maria sided with Steve on his call. So grudgingly he had conceded the point. Then he’d gone dark, moving to erase Hydra cells. He’d invited her then, but she’d said no.

After everything—with the light so recently shone on his distrust—she’d needed to figure out who and what she could be on her own. He’d made an appearance during Ultron _with_ a hellicarrier. Surprising since most had either been destroyed or mothballed. So where had that come from?

At the time, she just hadn’t asked. Bruce had disappeared, and they were putting together a new team. Nick stepped back and away, fading from any kind of presence.

So somewhere, he still had a hellicarrier. He’d been hunting Hydra cells. He would also have been rebuilding or restructuring his information network. She’d done something similar.

Then the Accords came up—and Nick hadn’t made an appearance. He was a dead man, after all and he’d remained very hands off with the new Avengers. The guys had all joined her at the table with plates of food, fresh coffee, and there was even toast. Studying Steve, she considered what had Fury expected them to do rather than take down SHIELD. The most obvious answer to all of this was to restructure SHIELD, and failing that, rebuild it.

SHIELD had always been an off books operation. Even in the beginning, it had been designed to tackle problems not wholly suited to other law enforcement agencies, particularly those grounded in science and intelligence. It had grown, and as it grew, it became unwieldy, buried in bureaucracy while still peddling secrets or lies clothed as secrets depending on your point of view.

How did on rebuild a wholly compromised intelligence service that had been marked as terrorists by most of the governments that used to trust them? Despite their seeming neutrality, they’d been primarily based out of the U.S. and relied on those diplomatic relations.

“He’s rebuilding SHIELD,” she murmured. “It’s the only logical conclusion. Isolate Clint, keep eyes on him, then try to lure him back in. He could use me as a smokescreen. This very public manhunt for me, bring Clint in under the guise and getting me back in and safe.”

Steve rested his forearms on the table, demonstrating about as much appetite as she felt. “And he wants you because you know all the players, and you’re the best agent he ever had.”

Well she wouldn’t go that far. “There’s also a lot of noise since they decided to allege I was behind his assassination.”

James frowned. “It wasn’t you.”

“We know that, but Ross liked to paint in broad strokes. Either way, bringing him up on the noise, shining a spotlight on DC and what happened there—it could be bringing some uncomfortable attention to Nick and whatever he’s doing.”

“Talbot,” Steve said slowly.

“The ass?” James scowled.

“Yeah…Rhodey said he was the one charged with cleaning up after SHIELD went down.” Steve scratched his jaw. “If someone is making Fury uncomfortable on the government side it might be him.”

“Or it could be the Committee,” Tony pointed out. “Either way, we’re in the clear from SHIELD and Fury, and their games. We’re hopefully going to be out from under the Committee or only very loosely tied to them soon. I have no interest in back tracking.”

Steve nodded.

That all seemed just a little too obvious for Nick. He wouldn’t be worried about one man, and he definitely wasn’t worried about the Committee. Ross was the only one with teeth there and she’d…

“Fuck.” Sometimes she hated her life.

“What?” James focused on her.

“Ross. Ross kept Nick in the shadows. Ross was the one with the teeth to keep the pressure on and I took the pressure off.” Of everyone—well everyone except her. “So now, he can recoup. But I don’t think he needs to rebuild SHIELD. I bet he already has.”

“A shadow organization.” Disappointment and disapproval radiated off of Steve. “Yeah, that sounds just like Fury.”

She chuckled and picked up her coffee. “Okay, I’ll work on this, but I’ll have to do it later. I have a few things to do and I’m going out today.”

That snared Tony’s attention from his phone where he’d already been looking up something—probably Fury related. “Where are we going?”

“We,” Steve told him. “Aren’t going anywhere. Nat and I are.”

James raised his eyebrows, and Steve shook his head at him from behind Tony’s head before the man in question wheeled around to look at him. “And where do you think you’re going? She’s supposed to stay out of sight.”

“Don’t worry, Tony. I will be.” Problem at least partially resolved, she resumed her omelet.

It took a half hour to persuade Tony to let the issue go. She wasn’t telling him about the jobs just yet. She still needed to brief Steve and James. Honestly, it was all a lot more work than just going to take care of it and getting it done, but she’d promised.

Hardly mollified, Tony ended the discussion by pinning a look on her from over the top of his glasses. “Fine, I’ll work on the Talbot angle and do a little fishing of my own, because I can do that. You keep that bracelet on Red. A deal’s a deal, right?”

She held up her hands. “I’ll call if I’m thinking of doing anything reckless.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re not a stupid man, and I’m not usually reckless.”

He grinned. “That wouldn't be how I'd label it if I used labels. Capcicle, a word?”

Then he was heading for the elevator. Steve gave her a long-suffering grin before he followed.

Only after they were gone did James lean forward. “Jobs?”

“Yeah, I have to go to Queens to get mission data and supplies from a safe house I keep there.”

They both glanced to where Steve had vanished on the elevator. Then James said, “How long?”

“Depends,” she told him. “Queens, a couple of hours. The jobs may be a couple of days, might be a couple of weeks.” Until she had everything in front of her, she didn’t know. “I have to be back here tomorrow evening for Peter. But I have a feeling he’ll hit patrol tonight, so then he’ll need at least a week’s timeout to get that lesson through his head.”

He was a good kid. Maybe too good. But his character wasn’t what she called into question. It was his discipline.

“Tough on him,” was James’ only comment. Not that they really needed to discuss that. Tough as it might seem to Peter, it was a lesson he had to learn.

“He’ll get over it,” she said, then stood. “I’ll do the dishes before I shower if you want to go grab one.”

With an arm around her waist, he pulled her down to sit on his lap. “I had one last evening while you and Steve were out,” he murmured. “But you know what I’d really like to have?”

“The winning ticket for the lotto?” It was such an inane comment, one corner of his mouth turned up in a grin.

“Not today,” he whispered, then wasted no time kissing her. His mouth was hot, and a little needy, but his hands were light if firmly attached to her hips.

All hot teases with his tongue, and little scrapes of his teeth. Even the bristle of his morning stubble scraping at her skin was electric. The sheer amount of want and reverence he poured into the contact left her a little breathless as it chased away the shadows of the morning’s conversation and roused the earlier, and far too soon abandoned, warmth at waking.

With great care and tenderness, he broke the contact and smiled at her. This wasn’t the cocky grin that echoed Bucky Barnes or the hint of a smile the Soldier gave her or even his earlier smile where only half his mouth turned up in a teasing look. This one was wholly unreserved, and so rare, she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d seen it.

“Hi,” she said, catching her breath.

“Hey,” he answered, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. “I’m glad you and Steve made up.”

“Me too.” The warmth bubbled a little higher, enough she almost wished she didn’t have to leave. But she’d told Steve the truth, she needed to do these jobs and not just for the money.

“Am I going with you and Steve?” It was a careful question, and his eyes shuttered ever so much. No one wanted to be rejected.

“Let’s work it out when Steve gets back. Your pardon isn’t final.” And she so didn’t want to jeopardize it. “But I’d like you there,” she admitted. “You two should know—you should know where the houses are. The codes.”

Someday they might need them and she wouldn’t be there.

It was better if they knew.

His eyes narrowed, but she relaxed her expression. Tony’s arrival had given her time to rebuild some of her walls, to shore them up. Enough that James nodded slowly. “I want to know everything.”

Then again, based on the inflection, maybe not.

“I promised I would tell you.” Being this open and exposed wasn’t easy for her.

“I know,” he cupped the back of her head and then pressed their foreheads together. It was even more intimate than his kiss and she closed her eyes, just savoring the contact.

_Watching him without watching him from across the room, she followed Madame for the inspection of the younger students. There was discord between Madame and Karpov. She’d refused the last two missions Natalia had looked forward to because they would have paired her with the Soldier. A month. It had been a month since they’d even been in the same room, and now all they had were brief moments where they could let their gazes meet across a sea of potential hazards with the greatest ones standing right at their sides._

_Just a few seconds of eye contact, it would have to be enough._

_A single drop of rain to a parched throat. Enough to remind her exactly what she was missing. But then, the coolness in those eyes warmed a fraction, a splinter in the ice, likely not visible to anyone but her. She curled her pinky, and when she shifted her gaze to check on the younger students, she couldn’t help but notice he’d curled his pinky, too._

_Yes._

_It was enough to know what they would do if they could._

_Now to turn if into when…_

Her eyes fluttered open, and she met his steady gaze and smiled. “I hated being kept away from you.”

“They pulled you away many times,” he agreed.

“Not anymore.”

“No,” he agreed in a raw voice. “Not anymore.” It wasn’t quite a promise, but a pledge.

There was a very real threat she was going to drown between the two of them, and she couldn’t find it in her to care much.

What a way to go.

“Go shower,” he said, with a little more firmness in his tone. “You have work to do.”

Yes.

Yes she did.

Pushing up from his lap, she sighed. They had been having such a lovely morning, however brief.

“Don’t look at me like that, doll.” He rose, crowding her toward the table, and instead of intimidating her it just made her laugh.

“You’re making me crazy,” she admitted. “Both of you.”

“Good,” he said without an ounce of apology. “You are worth the wait.”

The wait. The wait so she didn’t have a panic attack or freak out. She’d made it through all of the prior evening without one. That was a good sign, right?

“Off you go.” Then his charming grin took on a devilish twist. “We’re taking this slow, and you’d take the patience right out of a saint.”

“You are no saint,” she chided him.

“Neither are you.” Shots fired.

But the sound of the elevator opening made them both grin. Steve slowed his step as he eyed them, “What?”

The laughter swelling up in her spilled out and she had to lean on James to stay standing. She was still smiling ten minutes later when she finally slipped into the shower to clean up, get changed, and put her masks back on.

Beaumont’s job would take her south, and to the Gulf Coast most likely as she made her way to the border. If she could work it out, she was going to slip in a visit to Roxxon in there.

They were hiding something. Since the guys kept getting tangled in it, she wanted it sorted. Soon.

Then she had to get Guerda’s kid free. No kid needed to be in the situation he was held currently—another irritation in how long it was taking to get all the threads—the longer it took, the longer the kid would be there. Then she’d have information on Burnside and the Watchdogs.

That would be one old problem she would very much like to close, especially if Nick had rebuilt SHIELD.

She wanted him to have no excuses to pull her back in.

Not again.

Every detail soothed her, and her mind quieted. Not quite the clarity she got from dancing but organizing her tasks and getting ready to hit them and hit them hard sharpened her focus.

While she didn’t want to leave them, she couldn’t wait to get out of there.


	11. Triplicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are not easy for anyone.

**Chapter Eleven**

**Triplicate**

**Bucky**

 

Standing in the middle of the gunroom—because it was so much more than a cabinet—Bucky moved from weapon to weapon slowly. Like her SAW most of these fell somewhere within the range of work of art to ideal functionality. Running his fingers over the stock of the Dragunov SVD, he found himself lifting it down from the mount. It was in perfect working order, Natalia took impeccable care of her weapons.

The gleam on the blades, their perfectly honed edges and no signs of dulling scratches while the guns smelled clean, no hint of char—just metal and gun oil.

Balancing the Dragunov, he lined it up as if using the sight itself. Images punched through his mind like comic book scatter shots. How many faces had he tracked through the crosshairs? The long line of faces turned, as though strung out as paper dolls, one by one, glancing toward him.

Bucky had no doubt he’d killed them and the thought nauseated him yet the Soldier didn’t connect on the same level. They were jobs done. Orders fulfilled. The weapon in his hand was a thing of beauty.

“Do you two need some time alone?” Natalia’s voice rolled over him, pulling him back from the precipice. The faces faded, drifting away and he pulled his attention from the weapon to the woman leaning in the open door. Thankfully she’d ditched the photo static veil, and slipped off the blonde wig. The transformation had disturbed him, even if he’d known it was her—she’d looked nothing like her. Even her walk had changed, until they were inside.

The room itself was reinforced steel, located in the basement of her safe house—a detached Victorian style building with additions—like a sunroom on the stone balcony, a sunken driveway, and a wide-open floor plan on the first floor. There were no walls or barriers between the front door and the kitchen. The gated bars across the windows, and around the front looked artistic, but he didn’t doubt for an instant that they were also strategic and stronger than they looked.

Even the backyard, the size of a couple of postage stamps, had no greenery in it but had been transformed with brick and cobblestones—it had reminded him of the streets in Prague, Kiev, and even Budapest right down to the ancient fountain in the middle, though it was dry, she insisted water still ran to it. In its own way, the house was a fortress, nestled right into Elmhurst.

The upstairs had bedrooms and more presumably but upon arrival, she’d led them down here. Steve stood off to the side, staring at a wall covered in pins, photos, news articles, and more. She’d tied string to some that led to others. But Bucky had barely even seen it, just the weapons.

“No,” Bucky answered her question belatedly, but he didn’t put the gun back. She had a host of sniper rifles, from different eras and different countries. He could catalog every single one, and they seemed as familiar to him as his right hand—hell as his left hand these days. “You remember when I said you were scary?”

She chuckled. “Yes.”

“I was not wrong,” but even as he exhaled the words, he had to admit. He wanted to spend time in this room. He wanted to spend some time re-familiarizing himself with every single gun.

“What are all of these, Angel?” Steve asked, hands in his pockets as he studied the wall.

“Cases I solved, some I didn’t…people I helped, some I lost—stories I didn’t let go of because I didn’t think they sounded right.” She pushed away from the door and trailed her fingers across Bucky’s nape as she passed him, pausing long enough to whisper, “You can borrow any of them you like, but you have to put them back the way you found them.”

“No problem,” he exhaled. Natalia was the best woman he’d ever known, hands down. The Dragunov fit his hands. He’d already begun to break it down neatly to pack into a bag. He might take the ASVK and the SV-98—the bolt action on that took him back to the weapons he used in the war. There was something deeply satisfying in that idea.

“This girl—Maria Ramirez, age thirteen. She disappeared on her way home from school. By all accounts, she was a solid student, talented singer, and the eldest of five children. Her mother was a housekeeper at some place on Long Island, her father a machinest. They didn’t have a lot, but they were devoted to their kids. Her face ended up on a milk carton and the case went nowhere. I haven’t stopped looking for her yet.”

“How long?” Steve asked.

“She’ll turn twenty-two next month. Even if all I can do is find her body, I’d like to give her parents some closure. Her younger sister is at college, and one of her brothers is about to graduate high school. No one in that family went alone for years after…” Her voice drifted off. “I taught Alia, and the youngest daughter self defense. Gave Alia a taser and a panic button, too. She’s never used it.”

“You are all over the world, who does her panic button reach?” Bucky asked, pausing in his weapon packing.

“A retired special forces operative. He works in and around New York. Sometimes he’s gone, but he has friends. They keep track for me.” Natalia moved to another article and tapped it. “This is Yolanda Alvez, she was four when someone snatched her off the street. I got lucky…it only took me two days to track her down. She’s with her family, started high school this year. She has a scar, here,” Natalia traced a finger from behind her ear down the line of her throat. “Guy was trying to kill her before I could cross the room, she bit the hell out of him.” Pride echoed in every syllable. A tiny little thing who never stopped fighting? He understood Natalia's admiration.

“Did he hurt her…” Steve hesitated on the question, but Bucky heard what he was asking, so did Natalia.

“Beyond traumatizing her with the kidnapping and the cut, no. Bastard had a pathology. He liked to _raise_ them for a couple of years. I’m guessing win their trust, break them down. His other victims weren’t as fortunate as Yolanda.”

Bucky didn’t ask what happened to him—or what was left of him. He didn’t have to.

“This is Marcus Webb,” she murmured, moving on to the next photo. “His older brother died shielding him from a drive by in Cypress Hills. There were lots of shootings then…they said it averaged to about one every twenty-two minutes or so. Mothers were putting their babies in bathtubs to sleep. Cops didn’t investigate every reported sound of gunfire because there were too many. One of the cops working Marcus’ brother’s case told me that they’d found him shot on their way to investigate another reported hit. It was bad, but they weren’t making headway. The number of open cases and bodies numbered higher than the cops they had to work them.”

Bucky stood silent, listening. There was something magnetic in the way she described the era. Had he been active that year or on ice? Would it have mattered? Hydra hadn’t sent him to deal with crime or chaos, only to commit.

“Marcus was nine. He was scared to leave his house. Scared to leave his mom. Scared to get out of bed. But he’d described the shooter…a caseworker came by, a nice detective, she spent some time getting all the details out of him. Then she found the shooter, and his gang, and everyone involved.”

Steve just stared at her, and Bucky smiled slowly, something like pride flooding his chest. She’d always been exceptional, and she’d been trained to kill, to assassinate, to seduce, to steal, and to change the world for her masters. Here she was all these years later, and no doubt, she changed the world, but she made it better.

“What happened to him?” Steve asked.

She pulled her attention from the photo, and then ran her finger along a thread to another news story, this one far more recent. It showed a young dark skinned man with a sober smile wearing a blue uniform.

“He graduated the police academy fifteen years ago. He’s a detective now…he solves crimes and he volunteers with victim organizations helping kids survive traumas.”

“He does for others what you did for him,” Bucky said quietly, and she did that little careless shrug as if what she did was nothing.

“I hurt those that hurt him, he helps people so they don’t hurt like him.”

She did way more than that, and Bucky caught Steve’s gaze. They’d been talking more, about Natalia specifically, in and around rebuilding their own connections. Putting her first seemed natural as breathing to both of them, and the Soldier’s need to be aware of every threat around her, helped Bucky spot the danger before it happened. Steve, it seemed, had been adapting pretty well himself and the night before cemented it. Bucky didn’t like it when they disagreed—Steve pushed, and Natalia pushed back. They both wanted the same things, but they had vastly different approaches.

“You helped him,” Steve told her, echoing Bucky’s belief. “You helped all these people…” There was a note of awe in his voice.

“Not all of them,” she said. “Not yet. And sometimes I get pulled away for months, but Isaiah keeps looking and if he unearths a piece, he lets me know.”

Isaiah.

The reason they were here.

She turned away from the wall, and glanced at Bucky, then at the SV-98 in his hand. A smile stretched her lips, and he ducked his head. Heat flushed the back of his neck. But she just shook her head. “Ammunition is in the drawers below.”

He’d already figured that out, but he nodded and gave her a grin. Nothing he’d done around her seemed to surprise her, even if she didn’t remember them fully yet. The wonder when he’d had his first, full flash of being in bed with her…well it had relieved him, too honestly. There was thinking they’d been intimate, wondering how much of it had been wishful thinking, and then there was knowing—remembering how she felt in his arms.

It stoked his desire and gave him the fuel to be patient. How many years had they spent like that time in Karpov’s office, right next to each other, unable to even acknowledge the feelings between them outside of a stolen glance and the hint of a smile? Now, at least, he could reach out to touch her whenever he wanted, whenever the urge struck him, or like earlier in the morning, when the need to just hold her overwhelmed everything else.

“This room is always locked, and it’s coded. I’ll add both of you before we go. It’s not just a numeric code, but a fingerprint, a retinal scan, and a passphrase. Isaiah said I was paranoid. I don’t know where he gets those ideas, but I intend to find out one of these days.” The hum of humor entangled with truth under the words made him grin.

“Paranoia is a good way not to die,” Bucky told her as he finished packing the last of the guns. He had no idea what he’d use them for, not yet. But they would come in handy—they always did.

“Exactly!” Natalia beamed and gave Steve a teasing look. “See, he gets it.”

“I get it, I get it.” Steve held up his hands from where he was reading the wall still, he’d moved all the way to the far side. Maybe checking out the most recent photos, reports, and news articles tacked there. “And you know, after the last few months—I really get it. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“True,” she conceded, but it was an easy point to concede on. Steve’s world had been shifting on its axis for years—first waking from the ice, then the Avengers, Bucky nearly killing him, and finally the Accords.

Or maybe he should say, finally Natalia.

She was a damn good change for him.

If Bucky had never found his way back, she would have had Steve still or so Bucky hoped. She deserved the best of them, and more.

“So when Isaiah leaves me job materials or supplies, they will always be in here. The house itself has timed lights, and I come by periodically to make it looked lived in, but the community around us is all artists, musicians, and even a few writers. None of them keep anything resembling a standard schedule, so it’s easy to slip by unnoticed.”

She’d moved over to a desk, and settled onto the chair before opening a manila envelope. Three phones slipped out onto the desktop. The second envelope held a thick file folder, and a thumb drive. After booting up the laptop on the desk, she inserted the thumb drive, and a man’s face appeared in the video. He had dark hair, blue eyes, and a thin, almost narrow face. Isaiah looked like a pencil pusher, down to the pressed shirt and suit jacket he wore.

“Good day, Ms. Romanoff. We have an extensive briefing to go over and I recorded this as a precaution—as always. In the file folder accompanying this thumb drive, I included information on the stolen paintings. We’re going to need to authenticate them before making the ransom. The board of the museum has assured me the funds will be in place by the weekend. You may begin negotiations with the thieves at your leisure. They have been informed an intermediary will handle everything, and to await your call at the burner number we received.”

Natalia flipped through the file as he and Steve crossed the room to join her. Steve leaned down, hand on the desk as he studied the images.

“As you will note, we’re talking several high value acquisitions, most of which are irreplaceable. So if you can find a way to verify them swiftly to close the deal, that would be perfect.”

“I can help with that,” Steve murmured as he lifted one of the images out. It was a painting of a woman in a hat. It looked a little familiar, but Bucky didn’t know the artist. That had always been Stevie’s thing.

“Okay,” she murmured, then handed him the stack of images, there must have been ten or twelve.

“Also included in the file are dossiers on five individuals believed to be involved in the border trafficking we’ve been asked to find actionable intel on.” Images flashed on the screen that matched the ones in the folder. Natalia’s gaze went to each one, then she’d glance at the data on the back. “For my money, I’d go after Cliff Davis. He’s certified as a civil engineer, and does a lot of infrastructure work through his corporate and government contracts. But the fees he charges are far below the balances he manages in two separate accounts. I’ve also traced seven different estate holdings for him from Southern California to New Orleans. Big houses, lots of land, open space and access to water ways in most of them. You know if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck…”

“…it’s probably a badger,” she finished the sentence in tandem with his statement.

“But that could just be my generally suspicious and doubtful nature. I’ve tried to include their current locations as of this recording, so maybe that will save you some time. If you have to cross over into Mexico, do the blind passport switch. This hunt is making everyone look twice…and if you feel like dying your hair, that might not be a bad idea.”

“No,” Bucky half-growled, even if the man couldn’t hear him. Natalia flashed him a grin, and shook her head.

Steve didn’t look thrilled with the idea either. The wigs were bad enough. Natalia had the most gorgeous red hair, distinctive, and unique. Even if Bucky could see the tactical advantage to changing it, he still didn’t want to see it go.

“And last, but not least, the job I still think you are being foolishly sentimental about. Antonio Guerda’s son.” The picture on the screen was of a young boy, maybe eight or nine years old. “They provided proof of life about an hour ago, so you’ll find that here…” It showed a photo of the kid, then zoomed in on the newspaper he was holding with the previous day’s date, then zoomed out. Natalia paused the image and studied the kid, and then likely his surroundings. Bucky had his hand on the other side of the desk, mirroring Steve’s posture as they examined the image.

“Standard brick wall, no window, artificial light, no dirt on the kid’s clothes, in fact, those looked relatively fresh and clean, if ill-fitted. The shirt is a little big, especially in the shoulders,” he murmured this more to himself, but Natalia nodded.

“He looks to be in relatively okay health, the eyes are scared, and his knuckles are white. He doesn’t want to be there.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “But he’s got his chin up, and those knuckles are white because he’s making a fist. He’s a fighter.”

“Which hopefully means he won’t give up. They’ve had him a week, and the contact was sparse. They won’t deal with Guerda directly…”

“…which is why you have this job.” Bucky finished without needing further explanation. Antonio Guerda. The name tickled something in the back of his mind, but whatever it rifled didn’t jar loose easily.

“Pretty much,” she said. “Even for an arms dealer like Guerda. His kid doesn’t deserve this.”

She hit the space bar to restart the video.

“The phones are marked with the numbers. The kidnappers were informed the negotiator would be available after six p.m. on Friday.” That was the following day. “And yes, before you say it, that’s making the kid stay there longer, he looks okay at the moment. They seem more interested in the money they can make than on hurting him. Why they took so long to reach out, I don’t know—maybe they didn’t realize whose kid they were taking or the very real threat they’d created for themselves. Guerda has guaranteed the information will be sent within twenty-four hours of his son’s release. He’s also added a one million dollar bounty per head if you will just eliminate the kidnappers altogether. I didn’t give him that guarantee, that’s your call.”

Finally the image resolved to Isaiah again. “That’s all I have. I recorded this last part following the message I received from Beaumont. The server is shut down, you won’t be able to access it until I get it moved and reconfigure the security, and yes, Natasha, I know computers aren’t my thing. I’ll figure it out. You can redo all of it afterward, but we’re better down right now than compromised. If you need to reach me, send it via the old folks home.” He looked right into the camera. “Don’t get dead. I hate the paperwork.”

Then the image cut off and she laughed.

“So that’s Isaiah,” Steve said quietly.

“That’s Isaiah.”

“I thought he’d be older.”

“Don’t let his baby face fool you,” she tilted her head back to look at them both. “He uses that to his very real advantage.”

Steve grinned at her. “I believe you.”

Straightening, she glanced through the folder again. “Not every job is like this. They are usually more one at a time, but I’ve been off the grid for a while and Isaiah worries.”

“Your phone call before Russia probably didn’t make him feel better, doll.” Yes, Bucky knew she didn’t want him bringing it up, but it was a truth. A truth she’d prepared for and if he didn’t acknowledge it, it felt like he wasn’t acknowledging her. To his surprise, Steve just shook his head.

“About that…” She eased the chair back, and he and Steve both straightened to give her room. Folding her arms, she leaned against the desk and faced them. “We need to work out a code for the three of us, simple words that let us know we’re okay, we need help, or we need to be bailed out, bail out, abandon the mission, all clear, that type of thing—or in the worst of scenarios, don’t come looking.”

“Soldier,” Bucky said flatly. “If you need to be bailed out of somewhere, you ask for the Soldier.” The one in question stirred.

“Soldat.” She made a face. “It seems a bit on the nose.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “If _you_ need to be bailed out of something, then be as on the nose as possible.” The response made her smile. “If you’re okay—how about movie night?”

That earned a laugh. “Movie night, so we make plans if I’m okay or you two are.”

Bucky liked that. “If one of us needs help, we need to catch a train.” That brought Steve’s gaze to him with a jerk. “Easy Punk, I know I fell off a train. It would be why I’d need help.”

“Yeah but that’s—not funny.”

“Not meant to be.” Bucky met his gaze steadily. “It happened. Can’t change it. We both know it means, and now Natalia does, too.”

Though grudging, Steve accepted it and they worked out a few more phrases, ones they could work into conversation easily when separated but wouldn’t impact them so much when together.

After, Natalia showed them the safe and gave them the combination. Inside were documents, passports, and cash in varying amounts from different countries. She usually kept a few thousand on hand in varying denominations if she had to move fast. When she said she’d work on cover passports for them, Steve looked for a moment like he would object but Bucky shook his head. Natalia protected what she cared about with covers, extraction plans, and escape hatches. If they never needed them, fine. But let her do it.

Once she’d given them the nickel tour of the rest of the place—it was pretty ordinary with nothing to mark it personal, dry goods supplies in the pantry, and an empty fridge. Upstairs, there were four bedrooms, all stocked with queen beds, and standard sheets. It was a good place to rest if she was too exhausted after a mission, and she had room for more.

“Is this one of the places you share with Clint?” Steve asked as they descended the stairs.

“No. I set this one up long before SHIELD.” When she didn’t elaborate, he didn’t press. But Bucky examined the structure, and the minute changes. Areas where the molding pulled away to show a different paint color. The appliances in the kitchen were updated and recent. There was bullet proof glass in the windows, he’d bet his pension on it. The solarium provided a window to the world, but you couldn’t see in from the outside.

Secure.

Safe.

Anonymous.

A place for Natalia to vanish, then relaunch.

“You were here after SHIELD went down,” Steve said quietly.

“For a little while. Then I moved on…I thought about this place after Lehigh, but by the time I was awake, we were already halfway through Maryland…” She shrugged. “I keep a couple of go bags here, and another at Grand Central. I move that one periodically, switch it to a locker, or a different part of the station. We’ll set you guys up when you’re ready.”

Finally, she stopped in the living room and spread her hands.

“So that’s what I have here.” She didn’t quite chew her lip as she studied them, her expression so neutral it made Bucky’s heart hurt. Some part of her expected disapproval or even criticism. That part could just be disappointed.

“It’s nice,” Bucky told her firmly. “I’m especially fond of the armory.”

She chuckled.

“It is good,” Steve agreed, his eyes gentling as he watched her. “You think of everything.”

“I wish,” she deflected. “A lot of this comes from what did I need the most when I didn’t have it. The rest grew from trying to plan for everything.”

“It’s good, Angel,” Steve repeated, then waved her toward the sofa. “Do you want to plan up here or do we need to go back downstairs?”

“More places to sit up here…”

“I’ll get the folders then,” Steve said, before descending the stairs to the basement. Natalia watched him go with a curious expression.

“Didn’t think he would like this?” Bucky asked her quietly.

“He’s the straightforward guy, he doesn’t like secrets…this is all secrets.” With a sigh, she pirouetted to face him. “I don’t want him to ever look up and wonder what I did to him.”

“He already wonders that, doll. He wonders why he didn’t grab his chance with you a lot sooner…you have changed him, and it’s for the better. Don’t ever doubt that.” Closing the distance, he tucked a finger under her chin and studied her. Sometimes he thought she worried far too much, shouldering all of their sins or trying to. “You didn’t take his innocence, Natalia. The war did that. The war did that to all of us. You aren’t taking anything from him he doesn’t want to give you.”

Steve crested the top step and closed the door behind him as he carried the folders under his arm. “You give far more than you’ve ever taken.” He held out the folders to her. “So tell us what we can do…”

“I thought you were team lead.”

“For the Avengers. Not here,” he said, his expression stoic and his tone sincere. “These are _your_ jobs. Put us to work, ma’am.”

The corner of her mouth kicked a little higher. “Partners.”

Steve’s grin widened. “Damn straight.”

That settled, they spread everything out on the coffee table. It took a couple of hours, and by then Bucky was starving so Steve went for pizza but they had a rough idea of a plan. Steve would help with the art ransom, he wasn’t an expert, but he knew enough to spot the inconsistencies in a forgery. Visual acuity was definitely a plus in that region. Bucky would play backup for her going after the human trafficking. That could take a few weeks, and Steve being out of pocket so long would be noticed. They could play off Bucky’s absence as him needed to _rest_ and continue his recovery. The kidnapping would be Natalia alone, though neither of them cared for it, she pointed out that a negotiator with muscle would set the wrong tone. Though she conceded if there was time, she’d get one or both of them in position to back her up if necessary.

Of the three jobs, the last was the one she seemed most concerned about. The art was just art, and it was nice enough but there were no stakes. The human trafficking seemed a genuine desire to shut down, and the Soldier studied the five suspects. A bullet in their heads would remove them, but they couldn’t just cut off the head if the body was active. They needed to destroy the whole mechanism and from the glint in her eye—that was exactly what she planned.

The kid bothered all of them. Kids didn’t belong in a war or battle. But like Natalia, no one had given this kid a choice.

She lay back on the sofa, an arm over her eyes and when he nudged her up so he could sit with her head against his lap, she cast a smile up at him. “Surprised you’re not down doing more inventory on the armory.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” he murmured, stroking his fingers through her hair. “You can’t move on the kid before tomorrow evening.” And it was bothering her. But it wasn’t the only thing.

“You’ll get him back,” he assured her. “What else are you worrying about?” Not Spider-Punk he didn’t think. Watching Natalia with the kid had sent a surge of familiarity through him, only in those instances—he had been the teacher and she the student. There had been a kind of cockiness to her, a certitude, but she never discounted his lessons only the absolute necessity if she already had one sure way something could be accomplished.

Those first few weeks—the stolen fragments he recovered—had given him a taste for the fiery woman, far too mature for her years and so cynical he’d loathed every person involved in her training before him. She’d sparked emotion in him from the beginning, but the Soldier found it all within the parameters of his mission. The Winter Soldier had blocked all attempts to co-opt her, and many times he’d been successful. But not always, and he couldn’t stand the price she’d likely paid for it.

“This Roxxon thing,” she admitted, rubbing her lower lip with a finger. “The bioorganic. Steve’s been covered in it twice, and we still don’t know what it was or what they were up to.”

Worrying about Steve’s health was second nature to him. “He seems fine.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “But we don’t know what it did or could do. Is he fine because of the serum? Or is it just slowed down? It’s the vagueness of it, the possibilities…”

“You can’t jump at shadows. It could be nothing at all.”

“Sure.” Her dry tone didn’t agree. “Or it could be related to some of the work Isodyne was doing in the 40s. I don’t have any reason to tie them together except…”

“Except?” He prompted. Natalia saw patterns, she may not see the links between them clearly, but she detected them. It was another of her skills, it was how she could determine the best way to interrogate a subject—she read them like a book, figured out what would trigger them, and then began to apply the pressure. The same could be said for puzzles.

“Except, Roxxon took it over in 52, and this was after a massive accident involving zero matter.”

He had no idea what that was.

“Isodyne was supposed to be in fuel research. They didn't build Fat Man or Little Boy, but their research got far enough to continue atomic testing after the war ended. During that testing, they discovered zero matter and thought it would revolutionize. But something went awry with it, and there were people affected by it and they killed others. The research was classified by the SSR, but Roxxon still absorbed the company, and I am skeptical that the SSR kept everything out of their hands.”

“And you think this bioorganic is zero matter?”

“No, but I think they’ve been involved in sketchy fuel resources before. And someone is after whatever they have now, and if their record proves the same, then I have reason to worry that whatever Steve’s been exposed to has the potential to be dangerous.” A frown tightened her brows. “I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“Have you told him? About the stuff?”

“I don’t have anything to tell him, just half-theories and shadowy supposition.” Which left her disgruntled. Smoothing a finger over her brow, he smiled down at her.

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong. So what are you going to do about it?”

“When we go after the trafficking ring…Roxxon has facilities in the region.”

“You want to go fishing.” It wasn’t a question.

“Hunting,” she murmured, locking gazes with him. “I’m not going to let anyone or anything come for him or for you.”

Nor would they let it come for her, but he understood. “Then we’ll hunt. But you’re not telling him.”

“When I have something to tell him, I will. But if he’s already been exposed and at risk, I don’t want to expose him more.” Not that they could stop it if the Avengers had to deal with any more incidences involving Roxxon or its subsidiaries.

“Okay,” Bucky said slowly. “For now. Okay, but the moment we learn anything…”

“He’s the first one we call.” It was a promise. Telling him wouldn’t stop Steve from running headlong into trouble, in fact, it would probably just encourage the punk. He never recognized his own limitations, not before the serum and definitely not after. “Thank you, James.”

“For what?” Surprise skated through him.

“You don’t make me fight you to do these things.”

“Not yet,” he told her seriously. “Don’t assume I won’t push back when you need it Natalia.” But she thought these things through, and most of the time, she had more information than he did. If it came down to a choice between her safety, or doing something guaranteed to harm her, they would definitely be revisiting the issue.

“Fair enough,” she said with a smile, then it faded. The sound of the door opening had her sitting up. The scent of the pizza preceded Steve into the room. He stripped off the baseball cap, then peeled away the photo static veil she’d loaned him. It was fine for the neighbors to see people coming and going from the house, just not who they were.

“I see how it is,” Steve said with a grin. “I do all the work finding us food, and you two cuddle on the sofa.”

“You’re just jealous,” Bucky replied, flipping him off. “And you got to cuddle with her for hours last night.”

“True.” Steve’s smile dialed up a notch. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to cuddle some more.”

“Then bring the pizza over here and feed me.” Natalia patted the sofa next to her. “And we were still working, making plans…”

“For what?” Steve slid the pizza boxes onto the coffee table as Bucky straightened up the files to make room.

“Hunting,” she told him truthfully. “No call outs yet?”

“Not yet, maybe we’ll get lucky today.” Steve settled next to her. “Sam called, but I told him I had some stuff to do today. Tony texted, he’d like us back at the Tower—and he said you weren’t answering your texts.”

Natalia made a face. “That’s cause I left my phone downstairs.”

Bucky waved her back to the sofa. “I’ll get it. Do you want me to put these back or are we taking them with us?” He would need to take the weapons bag when they went so he could bring it back up.

“We can take it with us. There are digital copies on the thumb drive, but those should probably stay here until we decide to loop Tony in…if we do.” She frowned. “He has a lot on his plate already.”

Not prepared to argue for or against Stark, Bucky shrugged. He owed the man a debt, one he likely wouldn’t be able to repay. Not telling him something to protect him, however, was what got Steve in trouble. Natalia would likely change her mind, she was very fond of the billionaire, almost as fond of him as he was of her. “You’ll know when to tell him.”

She sighed. “Before I go,” she admitted. “If I disappear and he doesn’t know, it’s just going to stress him out.”

That was a word for it. Steve rubbed her back gently. “He’ll want to help.”

“He already helps more than I deserve.”

Bucky wasn’t prepared for that argument. Not when Stark would likely do a hell of a lot more if she’d let him. So he didn’t think deserve had anything to do with it. Leaving them to eat, he descended the stairs. The door to the armory was locked, but she’d already given them the code, and programmed them into it. When she’d added a secondary for his metal hand, he’d been surprised, but she shrugged. Never knew when his right hand would be in a cast or something. She had both of her hands in there, and Steve’s as well.

The door hissed as it opened. The security system was on its own separate power source, with backup generators that would run for as long as a week. She mused about adding an arc reactor, but wasn’t sure she could handle that particular install herself.

Her phone was sitting on the desk next to the laptop. The screen lit up even as he reached for it.

_And Red, don’t think I’ve forgotten you owe me a date. A bet’s a bet._

Bucky blinked at the message, then scrolled to the next one. It had notes on her bites. The one before that asked her to swing by the penthouse when they were back.

The fourth asked where they’d gone.

The fifth said _don’t make me turn on the tracker. I’ll do it._

There were emojis, and funny little pictures, but the most recent message reminded her about a date.

A date.

She and Stark were dating?

Karpov's face swam up through his head. 

_“Perhaps we will give him a few phrases for your next mission,” Karpov called. “If you ask me nicely.”_

How many men had used her for her sensuality? Was that what Stark was doing? _  
_

It didn't fit Bucky's mental image.

Not quite frowning, he studied the messages and wished he hadn’t come down to get the phone. He shouldn’t have read them in the first place. But the screen had lit up. Resentment curved through him, a spark. The Soldier assessed Stark as a genuine threat, but Bucky didn’t want to think that way.

She was his friend. The man had put himself on the line for her.

The night he’d had the nightmare, Stark had been right there with her—they’d been downstairs, alone. Stark hadn’t backed off while he thought Bucky was a threat. The Soldier found that agreeable.

He isolated her to a different wing when Bucky had arrived.

He’d been involved in the plans to bring her back to the States.

He’d opened the Tower to her.

The bracelet to track her.

Stark’s interest in Natalia might be friendly, but it went deeper.

Did hers go the same way?

“You get lost down there, Buck?” Steve called and Bucky pulled his attention from the phone to look back at the door.

“Coming,” he answered, carefully not crushing her phone as he relocked the armory and then went up the stairs.

“What’s up?” Steve frowned at him as Bucky turned into the living room.

Natalia sat cross-legged in the middle of the sofa, with a slice of pizza in hand when he crossed to her and held out the phone. Her expression turned nearly as puzzled as Steve’s.

“Are you dating Stark?” It wasn’t exactly how Bucky intended to phrase it, but the Soldier just wanted the answer so he could decide what needed to be done. Steve’s shoulders stiffened, a not so subtle acknowledgement that he didn’t know the answer. But Bucky focused his attention Natalia, and the way her expression blanked.

“You’re asking me why?” Which wasn’t an answer, it was a deflection with the opening salvo of a counter attack.

He set the phone in front of her and tapped the screen. The message _And Red, don’t think I’ve forgotten you owe me a date. A bet’s a bet._ displayed clearly. Steve would have no trouble reading the message. Natalia glanced from the message, to Steve, and then back to him. The Soldier couldn’t read her, not the way her eyes shuttered or her expression closed off. It was absolutely neutral.

“Stark jokes a lot,” Steve said, as if providing her an out. “And he flirts a lot.” Or maybe not.

“Are you both asking me if I’m seeing someone else while I’m seeing you?” The careful phrasing of that question should have been a warning light. “Or should I say seeing Tony secretly?”

“He’s asking you about a date, Natalia,” Bucky folded his arms. The Soldier needed more information, but Bucky really wished he had not gone to get her phone. The morning had emphasized their closeness, or at least he thought it had. She’d been letting them in, making them a part of her world.

Setting aside her pizza, Natalia picked up her phone, then unlocked it. Scrolling to the top of the message window, she handed it back to him. “Feel free to read them all.” Then she stood. “I’ll go do some research while you two discuss what it is I’m doing.”

Before she could take a step with the files in hand, Bucky clasped her arm. “Natalia—it’s a yes or no question.”

“Not really,” she told him. “It’s a question of whether or not you think I’m lying.”

“You’re not answering, which isn’t a lie or the truth.” The strained note in Steve’s voice nagged at Bucky. Dammit, he’d broken something and he needed to fix it. But he needed an answer… “What was the bet?”

When she would have tugged her arm away, Bucky tightened his grip and then his gaze collided with hers. “Natalia…”

“Let me go, Soldat. Or we will have a much different conversation.” The absolute lack of warmth was the second warning. This one he heard clearly.

“Nyet, otvet na vopros,” he ordered her. The Soldier wasn’t upset, but he required parameters. Explicit ones. 

“Buck,” Steve warned, rising. “Let her go. We’re not fighting.”

“You’re not. I just want the yes or no.”

“If I say yes, what are you going to do?” The Widow laid down the gauntlet, daring him to pick it up. Natalia would not be commanded, not matter who held the authority. Bucky frowned, because even the Soldier had a mixed reaction. Jealousy tangling with disappointment and something other—something he couldn’t put his finger on.

“No one is leaving,” Steve said into the tense silence, then put his hand on Bucky’s where he held Natalia. “Let her go.”

Loosening his grip, Bucky made himself take a step back. He didn’t want to threaten her, but Stark…Stark could take her away. He didn’t want that either. “You said not anymore to being pulled away.” If anyone could do it, it would be Stark.

She sighed, and exasperation rippled across her expression. “You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but why am I an idiot?”

Rubbing her arm, she tilted her head back. “Because your first assumption was I had kept this from you.”

“In fairness, Nat,” Steve said gently. “You did.”

“Not intentionally,” she admitted, and then sat again. The moment she settled, some of the anxiety pulling taut in his muscles eased. She wasn’t leaving. “Tony’s my friend…a friend I didn’t think I’d have again after Leipzig.” While she didn’t look at either of them, Bucky understood the implication. She’d given up a friendship for them, betrayed it. “Even after I got him out of Siberia, I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me. He had no reason to trust me—and yet he is. He showed up with you Steve. You both came. You both…you wanted answers, and he wanted to understand. He had a chance to ask all of his questions, he just let it go.”

There was a measure of disbelief in her words.

“He chose to be my friend again, and yes…he has made it clear he wouldn’t turn me down for something more.” Shaking her head, she didn’t look at either of them. Instead her gaze was on the bracelet. “He’s not a guy who trusts easily, and he definitely had no reason to forgive me. But he also said he was happy with friendship, if that was all I could give him, that was what he would take.”

Bucky set her phone down, and moved to sit on the sofa next to her. “Natalia…”

She held up a hand. “You asked, I’m telling you…the bet was about Ross…about which of us could take him down first. It was a fun bet, if he did it, then he had to take me out somewhere for dinner, but then I had to do whatever he wanted to do for the rest of the night. The reverse was true if I did it. I have to take him out for dinner wherever he wants to go, but after he has to do whatever I want to do.”

His stomach bottomed out. That was definitely a date.

“And you didn’t think we needed to know that?” There was a thin cord of anger in Steve’s voice.

“Steve, I’ve had a lot on my mind the last few weeks. And to be fair, when we made the bet—the three of us were … whatever we were and not this.” She scrubbed a hand over her face.

“Do you care about him?” The minute the question left his lips, Bucky regretted it. But the Soldier knew her, and knew she wasn’t saying everything. Natalia compartmentalized, she edited herself and at the moment, they were cornering her. Steve actually took a couple of steps back, and folded his arms when Bucky asked.

“I told you,” she said slowly. “Tony is my _friend_. So yeah, I _care_ about him.”

“Is that the reason you sided with him?” This time the question came from Steve. “Before—before you let us go. You said it was because we handled it badly…that more people were going to get hurt. But you still sided with Tony before then.”

“I am aware of what I said. I also told you then why I agreed with Tony about the Accords. I wasn't shy about telling you what  _you_ did wrong where he was concerned. Or have you forgotten that?” They were venturing back into dangerous waters. 

Bucky wanted to get out of them. “Are you going to go on the date?”

“At the moment, I don’t even know if I’m going back to the Tower.” It was cooler than if she’d slapped him, but he didn’t feel the strike any less.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Steve sighed. “Nat…Angel…we’re putting you on the spot.” They were. “But Tony has a thing for you.” Yes he did. “And we’ve both noticed it…or at least I have. I wanted…I was waiting to talk to you about it. Sometimes Tony is just Tony, and other times, he’s obviously wanting more. Like this morning, when he expected a kiss.” The discomfort in Steve radiated off of him, and Bucky clenched his fist.

Lips pursed, she glanced from one to the other, then took her phone and switched to her contacts, she waited for the call to connect, then put it on speaker. “It’s about time Red, are you done playing hooky from the Tower?”

“Not really, kind of busy here. About the bet…”

“Yeah, I know. I’m pushing my luck.” The engineer laughed. “And I definitely don’t want to lift the Crown jewels. Still, you can’t blame a guy for trying?”

“No, but you can blame a girl for not saying no apparently. Look, I can’t go out anyway and you don’t need the heat. Besides, I kind of cheated with Ross. I just went straight for him rather than dance through all the politics. So pick wherever you want the food from, and it’ll be my treat…we can even throw some Mario Kart in.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what that was.

“No, I can live without you kicking my ass at video games. I learned my lesson after Crash Bandicoot, thank you very much.”

A smirk lifted her lips.

“Red… it’s fine. I didn’t figure you were going to go for it with the super twins in the wings anyway.” Some of the arrogance left his tone. “We’re good right?”

“Yeah, we’re good. I’ll ping you when I get back. But it might be a few days.”

“Oookay…is Rogers there?”

Natalia glanced at Steve. His expression was focused on her, and his mouth a flat line. “Standing right here,” she told him. “Do you need him back at the Tower?”

“Not at the moment. You guys need anything?”

“Not at the moment,” she fired back.

“You all right?”

“Always.” Then she turned off the speaker and put the phone to her ear. “I gotta go…yeah…bye Tony.”

Then she hung up and faced them. “There you go, no more date. Happy?”

Not really, but Bucky wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Dames liking other guys had not been a problem for him before. He’d just dealt with it, and if he could charm them away, he’d done it. Even if that felt like a million years before. She gathered up the folders and stood.

“I’m going to get some work done. You guys can let yourselves out. I probably won’t make it back to the Tower tonight…”

“Nat,” Steve sighed. “You...don’t have to…”

“I know don’t have to do anything Rogers. I never do. But the kid is going to go on patrol tonight, and I’m going to hang out here and keep an eye on him. That might be too late to make my way back, so I’ll just stick around here tomorrow. I should work anyway.”

Then she descended the steps, walking away and leaving them both in silence.

It had been…a good day. She’d let them in, and he’d lashed out. She didn’t owe him a fucking thing, and he’d…“I just fucked that up,” Bucky admitted

“You weren’t alone,” Steve told him, his gaze on the door to the basement. “She didn’t want to answer the question.”

“She shouldn’t have had to answer it…” Bucky admitted. “I got jealous and accused her…”

“But I saw something happening and I wanted to ask her,” Steve admitted. “But I was afraid of the answer.”

Just like with Stark’s parents…

“Better pull up a chair, Stevie. She’s not coming back up to talk to us for a while.” And they needed to figure out how to fix this…

“She let me in Buck,” Steve exhaled the words.

Yeah.

She let them in.

And he kicked in the door anyway.

Neither of them said anything, then there was a half-tap of a foot, and Bucky glanced up to find Natalia staring at both of them, her arms folded. It hadn’t even been fifteen minutes.

“I don’t want to leave,” he told her before she could tell them to get out.

She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not trying to lie to either of you,” she said after a protracted silence that left Bucky’s skin icy. “I’m not. But my friendship with Tony means a lot to me, and I don’t want that to be an issue either.”

“It’s not an issue,” Steve answered before Bucky could say anything.

“It sounded like an issue a few minutes ago.” And she wasn’t wrong.

“It shouldn’t have been,” Bucky said. “I got jealous. I…Stark can offer you everything.” And he’d never shot her. “He can fix your problems or give you a way out…”

“I don’t need Tony to fix my problems or give me a way out,” she said flatly.

“Nat…” Steve took a step in her direction. “I’m sorry. You’re not the only one not good at this. I keep saying I’m not going to push you…”

She sighed. “I’ve always said you shouldn’t trust me, I didn’t think it would hurt if you didn’t.” That admission cut at Bucky. “But you’re not wrong. This is who I am.”

“Natalia, I trust you. I just don’t want to lose you.”

“I think I don’t trust me,” Steve admitted, and that snagged Bucky’s attention. “I’ve made mistakes, I told you I have a bad habit of waiting…and Tony doesn’t. Bucky’s not wrong, Tony can offer you a hell of a lot, Nat.”

“Have either of you asked if that’s what I _want_ from Tony? Just his things? His money? What he can _do_ for me?”

Well, when she put it like that.

“I’m sorry,” Steve repeated. “I know you don’t want anything from any of us.”

But even though they were all in the same room, and still there, she felt like she was a million miles away. Then Steve’s phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket with a dark look.

“You have to go…” Natalia’s expression tore at Bucky. He’d done this. He’d screwed this up by letting his insecurity get the best of him.

Steve clenched his fist. “They can handle it.”

“Steve…” She tilted her head. “You know if something happens and you’re not there…you’re not going to forgive yourself.”

“I’m putting you first.” He took a step toward her, and she blew out a breath.

“And I’m telling you, that you don’t have to.”

“Nat…”

“Partners,” she told him, then she looked at Bucky. Her expression was open, and there was pain in those green eyes. Pain they’d put there, but she didn’t shy away. “Remember?”

Closing the distance, Steve cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, hard and firm. “Partners.”

A tremulous smile lifted her lips. “Go get them, Cap. The team needs you.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Be safe,” she whispered.

“You too,” he said, then kissed her again before looking at Bucky. “You stay with her.”

That was an order neither he nor the Soldier had any intention of disobeying. “Watch your back, Steve.”

“You too.”

Then he was gone, and it was just Natalia and Bucky.

“Still hungry?” He hoped the answer was yes. She'd just begun eating willingly again. 

“I could eat,” she told him. Then she glanced at the door Steve had vanished out of. And for the first time, Bucky really saw it. The cost of being left behind.

She was paying it every single time Steve went out that door. It was why she kept pushing Bucky to not let anything happen to his pardon. She wanted him to be there, because she couldn’t. But what price was she going to pay if both of them were going and she couldn’t?


	12. Fracked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mission turns up more sludge, and even worse results all the way around.

**Chapter Twelve**

**Fracked**

**Tony**

 

 

Tony had been reviewing the latest analysis of the bioorganic compound found on the oil derrick and the tanker. The combination of elements wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen. Carbon basis, but it wasn’t petroleum. He was pretty sure it was distilled from something, but neither he nor Friday could label it.

“Let’s run the substance through the gamma spectrum…monitor for any reactions.” Though he was starting to think this was some kind of McGuffin, he couldn’t dismiss Roxxon’s history in dabbling with questionable energy sources. Removing his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

He fired off a couple of texts to Red. He’d sent a couple earlier. But she hadn’t answered yet. He kind of wanted her input. She had an uncanny sense for where the bodies were buried. Then just because she hadn’t answered and Steve had gone with her, he sent a text to him to make sure everything was all right.

That done, he stared at the screen that didn’t provide him anything new no matter how long he looked at it. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. “Baby girl, has Red found out anything useful in her background checks of Helcion Alchemical and Roxxon?”

“No, Boss. As far as we’ve been able to reference, there are no links between the companies. They aren’t even in business together.”

“At least on paper.” But there were plenty of ways for them to be in business off the books. It happened all the time. Stane had done it with Stark Industries. Picking up the hand grip tool from his desk, he began squeezing it as he paced. Stane negotiated with everyone from terrorist cells to arms dealers, whoever offered him the best prices and even those that didn’t. All he wanted to do was maximize the size of his bank balances—the man never had enough money.

When his phone rang, he was grateful for the interruption. Even better, it was Natasha. “It’s about time Red, are you done playing hooky from the Tower?” It made him itchy that she was outside the security he and Friday could oversee.

“Not really, kind of busy here. About the bet…” Something was off in her voice. It was—detached. Cool.

“Yeah, I know. I’m pushing my luck.” He laughed, waiting for the smart remark to put him in his place. “And I definitely don’t want to lift the Crown jewels. Still, you can’t blame a guy for trying?”

“No, but you can blame a girl for not saying no apparently.” That line gave him pause. “Look, I can’t go out anyway and you don’t need the heat. Besides, I kind of cheated with Ross. I just went straight for him rather than dance through all the politics. So pick wherever you want the food from, and it’ll be my treat…we can even throw some Mario Kart in.”

What the hell? Even when she affected the light tone, it wasn’t her. Her line about blaming a girl for not saying no… His text about the date. He’d been half-kidding, looking to provoke a reaction. “No, I can live without you kicking my ass at video games. I learned my lesson after Crash Bandicoot, thank you very much.”

Which one of the super twins got in her face?

“Red…we’re good. I didn’t figure you were going to go for it with the super twins in the wings anyway.” She had him on speaker phone which meant she was letting Rogers and/or Barnes listen in. Now he really wish they hadn’t left the Tower. “We’re good right?”

“Yeah, we’re good. I’ll ping you when I get back. But it might be a few days.” _Days?_

“Oookay…is Rogers there?”

“Standing right here,” she told him. “Do you need him back at the Tower?”

“Not at the moment.” But that could change if she needed a break. “You guys need anything?”

“Not at the moment,” she fired back.

“You all right?” _C’mon Red, give me something here._

“Always.”

Suddenly he was off speaker. “I gotta go—”

“Red, seriously, call me later, yeah?”

“Yeah.” That was less than convincing.

“Bye Tony.” Then she was gone.

What the hell Rogers? He switched to his contact information to Steve’s number, then hesitated. If there was already an issue because he’d been teasing her about their play date…fuck.

He put the phone down and stared back at the screen. Days. Natasha wasn’t planning to come back for a few days. Rogers and Barnes could go stay at the Compound if that was the problem. Irritation skimmed over his nerves. He hadn’t put all this effort into getting her back for those two to screw it up.

“Boss,” Friday interrupted. “The committee is on the line, they need the Avengers to head to Ft. Bridger in Alaska.”

“Send out the call, and put them on. What the hell is in Ft. Bridger?” Tony tapped the arc reactor to trigger the nano tech armor to suit up as he walked toward the deck.

“It’s a missile defense site.”

“Well that can’t be good.”

“Captain Rogers is on his way, Boss.”

“Take the quinjet and pick him up Baby Girl, then grab Vision.” God they needed more people. “Tell them I’m on my way.”

He wasn’t in much of a mood to ride with Rogers’ at the minute either way.

“On it Boss. And I have General Talbot on the line, the new U.S. liaison.”

Oh this should be good.

“Stark,” Talbot said without preamble. “We lost contact with the base twenty-five minutes ago after an distress signal was sent out. How fast can your team be on site?”

“We’re on the way right now, General. But it’s going to take a few hours even at our best speeds. Don’t you have any troops on the ground who are closer?” Not that he minded going. But if it were a real emergency, the delay could cost them.

“Unlikely. This is a missile defense site, and it’s located in the mountains. It’s designed to be inaccessible, and it has the latest tech for automated defense. If those systems are active, they’d cut through our troops.”

 _If_ the systems were active.

“But obviously not through whatever breached their defenses.” Thus, the Avengers…

“Why do you think I called you?”

That was what Tony thought. “Well, we’re on it. ETA four hours. Keep the phone nearby. Not that I’ll be calling.” Then he cut the call. “Friday, get me everything on the defense systems for Ft. Bridger, then let’s take a deep dive for any classified info you can find. If it has such state of the art defenses, in an inaccessible location, I want to know what they’re doing up there.”

 

 

**Steve**

 

Arms folded, Steve stared at the screen as Friday reviewed the data for the base—it was a cross between very little and next to nothing. “And we don’t even know what was attacking them?”

“Well that would be the definition of unknown assailants, Cap.” Tony had barely said a word since the call had gone out. Since it would have taken Cap too long to the Compound, Vision and Sam had swung through the city. He’d been lucky to make it a few miles from Nat’s safe house. Frankly, the last thing he’d wanted to do was leave. The unsettled feeling in his gut wouldn’t ease.

“Hey man, we’re just trying to get a feel for what we’re heading into,” Sam interceded, but Steve just shook his head at him.

“Talbot didn’t give us anything more than the distress signal went down?”

“Imagine that, the government keeping secrets about their top secret eyes only clearance base that just so happens to be a missile defense site. The horror. People keeping secrets. Better get ready to chastise them.”

Steve welcomed the biting sting in his words. Nat hadn’t even yelled at them. Her eyes had gone flat, not hard. Her expression neutral, not angry. From the moment Bucky asked the question, Steve recognized they needed to back off. They were stepping over a line, but he’d have been lying if he hadn’t noticed the shifting ground between Tony and Nat.

_“I still trust her.”_

_“No you don’t.” Clint sucker punched him with the statement, and the archer hadn’t flinched._

_“Yes, I do.” Of course he did. He had to trust her._

_“Look, Cap—it’s normal to want to keep the person you care about most safe. But you don't trust her with her own safety.”_

He didn’t trust Nat with Nat, which meant he didn’t trust Nat with Tony. The corner of his eye twitched, and the dull thud of a hammer striking against his skull began to reverberate.

Sam cleared his throat, and Steve jerked his attention back to the present. They were still twenty minutes out.

“How do you want to play this?” Steve needed to focus, and he did his best to ignore the concerned looks Sam shot his way.

“Well I’m almost there, so I’m going to test their automated defenses and get a look.”

“Maybe you should hang back and let us catch up…” If something went wrong, they were still minutes out.

“Unlike some people, Cap. I don’t require your approval—”

A loud boom cut him off, and Steve dropped his arms. “Tony?” When there wasn’t an immediate response, he glanced up at Vision. “Can we get there faster?”

“I’m accelerating, but if we increase speed too much, we could crash right into whatever resistance Mr. Stark has encountered.”

Their scanners weren’t giving them much. Friday had reported jamming technology, enough that it was scrambling any footage she was able to grab from whatever satellites were in range.

“I’ll get ready to drop as soon as we’re in range,” Sam said.

“No, not until we see what we’re dealing with… Friday, do you have a read on Tony?” The AI wasn’t answering either, that could not be a good sign. Tension corded in his muscles. They were seven minutes out, and he’d done a full gear check before the comms crackled to life.

“So…their automated defenses are on,” Tony commented in a pained voice. “We found a narrow corridor in, sending you the path now. Grab your crocks and shed your socks, this is going to be a messy ride.”

“I am adjusting to Mr. Stark’s suggestions,” Vision informed them. “Brace yourselves gentlemen.”

“Strap in Sam,” Steve ordered, then moved away from the screens to the viewport, bracing himself with a grip on the ceiling bars. The quinjet arced hard to port, going almost perfectly vertical on the axis as Steve fought to keep himself still. Vision threaded them through what had to be a needlepoint of access. Explosions rocked around the outside of the quinjet, their tremors shaking the ship. It was worse than the Comet.

Nearly as abruptly as Vision had angled the jet, he suddenly turned them into a sharp, steep dive even as he brought the wings to even once more. The plummet bottomed his stomach out, and not for the first time, Steve was grateful the nausea he often experienced as a kid didn’t show up. As swiftly as they’d accelerated into the dive, the engines fired reverse and they came to a halt just inside the perimeter of the base.

The unobstructed view of the base was a thing right out of a nightmare. “Sam,” he warned. “Go high as soon as you’re out. Tony, what’s your status?”

Outside, men—or what might have been men—staggered like something out of one of those zombie movies they’d endured during a movie night a couple of years before. But these men hardly looked human anymore. Coated in a viscous, muddy material, they stumbled around the exterior of the base crashing into vehicles, buildings, doors—there seemed no rhyme or reason to their pattern of behavior. Just destruction.

“Working on getting into the secure bunker. Watch yourself with these guys…” Tony zipped into view, and one of the man-creatures ripped a door right off one of the vehicles and sent it winging toward him. Tony avoided it easily. “Containment is gonna be an issue.”

Containment. Could these things be contained? “Vision, see what you can do about creating a secured area—” One of the creatures punched his fist right through the hood of the same vehicle and tore out part of the carburetor. “Preferably something they can’t punch through.”

“Understood, Captain. I will see what I can do.”

“Sam, you stay on the ground with me,” Steve said, adjusting the shield on his arm and angling his view to look up. Periodically one of the creatures threw something high enough, and the automated defense system opened fire. Touching his comm, Steve searched for Tony but he couldn’t spot him. “We’re on our way to you, Tony.”

“Take your time…see the sights… this might take a minute.”

Or a hell of a lot longer.

“Captain Rogers, I will let you out, then secure the jet before I phase through.”

Sounded like a plan. Focusing on the task at hand, Steve had to let everything else go. Once they were out there, they were in the fight. He glanced at Sam. “Ready?”

“A little too late to say no, isn’t it?” But he had a grin on and Steve chuckled.

“Well, you can always hide out here on the jet.” But as soon as the ramp began to lower, Steve rushed it and rolled out the top. They didn’t want to give these creatures any chance of getting on board. Sam was three steps behind him. They were in it now.

 

 

**Tony**

 

 

“Get in there Baby Girl, we need to own this place.” Or someone did, what the hell had they been _researching_ at their little missile defense site? The mountains in Alaska meant it was cold, snowy, and definitely unfriendly territory. For a hot minute it reminded him of the base at Arkangelsk, and that was a memory he’d rather never revisit.

“Incoming,” Friday warned, and Tony turned to find a pair of the mud-men, mud-creatures— _Walking Mud_ , yeah that fit—shambling toward him. They didn’t have much in the way of speed, but they sure made up for it in their punch. As if to prove his point, one of them ripped down the reinforced steel grated fence separating the communications center from the rest of the base. Tore through it off like it was tissue paper.

Okay. That happened.

The creature flung it at him, and Tony fired a repulsor to knock it aside. The steel sparked, and then clattered as it slammed into the building. The Walking Mud kept up their approach and he fired a shock of soundwaves. The viscous substance eddying over them rippled when the waves hit them, almost peeling backwards. Though it slowed them, they didn’t stop their slow, relentless trudge forward.

Peppering the ground between them with small weapons fire, he tried to discourage their continued approach. Tony wasn’t even sure if these things had been people before. He switched to fire, and even as it roared to life, the flames hot enough he could feel the heat against his armor, they kept coming. Nothing deterred them.

“Sorry,” he muttered, then doubled the soundwave force and hit them with one blast after another. That pushed them away. “How we doing, Friday?”

“Almost there Boss, they put it lockdown. It’s not designed to be opened from the outside.”

Bad planning on their part. Unless it was keeping these things out. That might be a good idea. It was the only reason he’d left the automated defenses up. If these things made it past the perimeter. They’d be so much slag if a missile hit them. The repeated sound blasts were losing their efficacy as the creatures resumed their march.

“How we doing, Tony?” Cap’s voice sounded strained. “Sam, don’t let them get a grip.” There was a hiss crackling over the comms.

“We’re working on it. See if you can bang a gong, they really don’t like sound.” Not that this was going to last much longer. Tony activated his boot repulsors and climbed. One of the Walking Mud opened its mouth—please God let that be a mouth, because anything else would be horrifying—and it bleated out a yell. It wasn’t quite the other guy’s roar, but it set all the others to roaring.

Tactical zoomed in on Cap and Falcon working their way through a gathering throng of the creatures. Wilson was slowing Cap down… “Wilson, take to wing and get Cap over those guys. Don’t go higher than twenty feet, and watch their throwing arms. They think they pitch for the Yankees.”

A clank knocked his head to the side with bruising force. “Oh, now you’re just pissing me off.” Tony shook his head, and redirected his attention to the pair of creatures now flinging—parts of an air conditioning condenser at him. He avoided the next two, but caught the third straight in the chest. His screen flickered, then the nanites did their work, repairing any breaches in the armor and reinforcing the banding on his chest.

“My turn.” He sent a pair of miniature missiles winging right toward them. They impacted against the sludge, and just vanished inside of it. Tony gaped, then twin explosions blew them apart and the goop was everywhere, the building, the ground, the fencing, and some of it even managed to spatter his suit.

“Decontaminate,” he ordered. Electricity sizzled over the surface of the nanites along with a purging gas. The residue on him burned to ash and fell away.

“Almost got it Boss,” Friday told him just as Sam landed with Steve in tow.

“You put on weight Cap,” Falcon huffed, and his wings folded down to shield his back. The pair looked toward the creatures that had surrounded them earlier. Sludge spattered the arm of Cap’s suit, and seemed to be in the process of charring it.

Oh hell no. He was not explaining to Red that Cap got eaten by the Walking Mud. She’d do more than go Michonne on his ass. Landing, he grasped Cap’s arm right over the charred area. “Hold still—and hold your breath—this might sting. Decontaminate.” The skitter of electricity surged over the surface of the nanites armor, then over Cap’s suit. Cap hissed, but he clenched his jaw. The gas followed until the remaining flecks ashed away. What was left of the sleeve over Cap’s forearm had shredded, leaving the skin red and tender looking. Releasing him, he bent his hand forward and fired the nanite gel right at the surface of Cap’s skin. They weren’t perfect, but they’d coat it, cool the burn, and seal against any contaminates or more sludge getting on it.

“Thanks,” Steve said, and despite his pain expression, he meant it. “Vision, how we doing with containment?”

“Their strength is immeasurable. No object seems to be resistant to the pound of pressure they exert. I am about to attempt a different method. Please stand by.” The red skinned android began digging a trench around the creatures, cutting off their path. The scoring deep into the frozen earth sent steam cascading upward. If he could isolate them long enough, they might stand a chance. When one of the creatures threw a barrel Vision, he phased to let it pass through him. But that also meant his laser cutting ceased.

“Will it be this year, Baby Girl?” Impatience crept through Tony. Today was not the day for military security to have achieved impenetrable levels.

“Almost,” the AI informed him primly. “I’m having to create my own backdoor.”

“We could blow the door,” Wilson suggested. He had a gun in each hand, his back to Tony and his attention focused on the seething sea of Walking Mud trying to get around the barrier Vision was digging out.

“Yeah, I’d rather be able to close _them_ out thank you very much.” Some of the creatures were going to get past the perimeter. “Hey Cap…give me a hand here, we need to buy Vision some time. Serve it up.”

Fortunately, he didn’t need to explain it to Cap, he was already in motion and sending the shield flying with almost scientific precision. Tony targeted the vibranium, eyeballing it then supercharging it with an electrical blast. It sizzled as it swerved through the creatures, tearing some in half, and the couldn’t absorb the shield as it discharged the electricity. Once it was clear, Cap activated his gauntlet, and the shield returned to him.

“Got it,” Friday announced and the door behind them depressurized and opened.

“We’re going in. You got this Vision?” The creatures were pulling themselves together. That turned Tony’s attention to the pair he’d destroyed. They were slowly oozing toward each other. Yeah, that was not what he wanted to see happening.

“I shall endeavor to keep them contained, Mr. Stark. Perhaps you will find something inside to explain what this is and why…”

That would be ideal.

He set fire to the puddles working to reassemble themselves before turning and heading inside with Cap and Falcon a half-step behind him.

“Lucy, you got a lot of explaining to do,” he told the building.

A lot.

 

 

**Steve**

 

The burning sting created by the ooze on his suit, then Tony’s decontamination thrummed with his pulse. Even the cold mountain air couldn’t ease the scorched sensation. Why the hell did it always end up with them somewhere cold? One of these days it’d be a fight in a jungle…or maybe a desert. That could be different.

As soon as Tony got the communications bunker opened, he lead the way inside. Steve tried not to think about the burning ooze or the wretched smell after Tony set it on fire.

“What the hell is that stuff, man?” Sam asked as he grimaced. He sent Redwing ahead to scout, but Tony didn’t comment. The doors hissed closed, sealing them inside. All the lights burned red, an alert, but there was no siren or horn.

“No idea, that’s what we need to find out. Split up, stay on comms. Find any survivors.”

“And if there’s a locked or sealed door,” Tony commented from where he’d paused. “I’d leave it locked.”

Joining him, Steve stared into what had to be a containment room. It was all white inside, and there was one of those things in there.

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly after glancing over their shoulders. “I see what you mean.”

“Central hub is two floors down. We’ll meet there…Tony, you and Friday have their systems?”

“Oh yeah,” Tony told him, walking away from the door and heading to the elevators. He didn’t call it up, so much as just pull the doors apart and glance down the shaft. “We’ve got the computers.”

“Hey Tony,” Steve called before he dropped into the shaft. When the gold mask turned in his direction, the eyes lit up white blue, Steve lifted his chin toward him. “Be careful.”

“It’s me,” was his response as if it were the only explanation before he disappeared down the shaft.

It was also what worried Steve.

Thirty minutes later, he followed Sam down the shaft to the third level. They’d cleared the first two, and had more questions than answers. Steve located three more containment rooms like the first. All occupied. Though one of them hadn’t been shuffling anywhere, the creature had just been slumped in a corner, almost hugging its legs to itself.

Hopefully Tony had better luck.

While the first two levels had boasted a cafeteria, gym, rec room, and offices, the third floor seem comprised of computer rooms, and data banks. Tony stood in the center on a raised dais without the suit as he tapped away on a keyboard. The layout was so eerily familiar, yet at the same time the machinery was more this century than the last.

What were the chances of finding yet another computer set up like Camp Lehigh, discounting the one they’d found at Azzano. Neither he nor Natasha lingered over those devices, and they hadn’t activated them. One Zola had been enough for a life time.

This wasn’t Zola though…it was a circular room, workstations filled it, and it seemed designed for dozens. Their footsteps echoed in the cavern.

“I’m not going to ask what you found,” Tony said without looking up. “I already know. There are no survivors of whatever this stuff is.”

“The base had over two hundred staff.” Officers, scientists, maintenance workers, and grunts, and while they hadn’t come across any remains, there weren’t enough of those things to account for all the missing personnel.

“I know, I’m looking at them.” Tony tapped the screen. Sam made it there a beat before him.

“Oh, man. That’s messed up.” The monitor showed a holding area, there were more containment units throughout. It looked like some kind of triage center, with plexiglass sealed treatment areas side by side. Every single one had a sludge creature in it.

“Friday estimates there are about a hundred down there. Another thirty or so scattered throughout the building. Maybe twenty or twenty-five outside.” Tony grimaces.

“So that leaves about forty unaccounted for.”

“Maybe,” Tony hedged, before switching to a second screen and pulling up a report. It was a warning and an order to seal the base. “Material escaped containment. Unable to reacquire. Initiated lockdown.”

That wasn’t good. “We just broke their lockdown.”

“That we did, but we’re not detecting anything in the ventilation indicating foreign particles or hazardous material.” Tony was still tabbing through screens.

“I’d say those things are pretty hazardous,” Sam argued. “What material escapes containment? Material is usually inanimate.”

“Usually, but I’m guessing based on this it exhibited some sentient properties, but it didn’t have to be self aware to do damage. Just as long as we keep it from touching us, we should be fine.” Tony spared a glance at him, and Cap nodded. It had gotten on him, but he was fine.

The burn hurt.

He’d live.

“Let’s focus on what did this and whether we can undo it. The mission brief said a distress call went out.”

Tony studied him for a long a moment, then nodded and glanced back at the screen. “I’m pretty sure initiating the lockdown also initiates a series of pre-programmed protocols, including the distress beacon. They probably turned it off because they didn’t want people coming in.”

“That explains the welcome part with the defense systems.” Sam fidgeted, as he walked the perimeter of the dais, looking at the different screens. But he didn’t touch anything.

Neither did Steve, but for an entirely different reason. Most computers and he didn’t get along. He usually handled watching Natasha’s back while she cracked them open like an egg. She made it look so easy.

She made it all look easy.

But considering the threat level, he was actually glad for the first time she wasn’t here. She’d have been right in the thick of it, and Sam couldn’t carry two of them.

 _Tony would have picked her up._ The thought snuck in like a thief, and he scowled, more at himself than anything else. Being bothered by the idea of Tony saving her life left a bitter, acrid taste on his tongue. Tony _would_ save her life. That was the important part.

The rest of him needed to get on board with that. The fact it was an issue at all wasn't like him. Or he hoped it wasn't, because he didn't want it to be.

“Wilson, move to the terminals on that outer ring. Look for any logs detailing substances brought in, research—anything that looks like it could have anything to do with the Walking Mud.”

“Is it mud?” Steve asked, he hadn’t really had time to examine the material. It had a sludgy quality to it, but it oozed and slid like it was wetter than that. Still the pieces Tony had burned smelled like creosote and ash. He could still practically taste it on the back of his throat.

“Not sure,” Tony commented. “It looks like mud, doesn’t hit like it thought. Not that I’ve ever thought of mud as hitting.”

Steve shifted to look at the monitors where the creatures moved aimlessly in the containment rooms. Some beat against the glass walls, as though trying to break it down. Others just stood there, staring, and still more had what would arguably be their hand pressed to the pane separating them, while on the one on the other side mirrored the gesture.

“How long do you think it took that to happen?” He pitched his voice low. Sam was hunched over a computer screen twenty feet away didn’t even glance up.

“Well if I’m reading this right, and I probably am, because I’m me. The first containment breach occurred twenty-four hours ago. The base commander issued orders to close the base, but they didn’t initiate lockdown until two soldiers assigned to the detail to reacquire it were infected, about six hours after exposure.” Tony braced his knuckles against the counter. “After that, they isolated the staff. But it doesn’t seem to have done a damn thing.”

“They walked into those cells of their own volition,” Steve said slowly, horrified. “Did they think it was going to save them?”

“No idea on that last part, but I’m going to say they deserve a medal for their efforts. Based on the behavior of our friends outside, this could be a whole lot worse if they hadn’t acted.”

“Got it,” Sam called pulling both of their attention. “They brought in several cores—all of them frozen—from a dozen different drilling sites. The purpose was to harness the energy contained within the cores, something to do with density of mass. It looks like they thought they were on to some kind of self-replicating fuel source.”

“Self-replicating is never a good idea,” Tony stated categorically. “Where did they get these cores?”

Sam straightened. “Drilling sites in the Gulf, and a couple more off the eastern coast of Africa.”

“Roxxon?” Tony asked, his expression fierce.

Sam glanced back at the screen, then over to them. “Yeah, it was shared as part of their military contract.”

“Of course it was…Friday, pack it all up…we’re taking it with us.”

At Sam’s questioning look, Steve shook his head. Roxxon had been the owner of the oil derrick from earlier in the week, but they hadn’t owned the tanker. Still, oil derrick, tanker, and now a military base researching alternative self-replicating fuel sources? It didn’t take a detective to line those up questionably.

Nat had taken his uniform down to decontamination…she’d given him that look when he’d told her he would have taken care of it later. A glance at the screens, and he had to wonder how many of them thought the same thing.

Wait… “Tony,” he hissed, moving closer. At Tony’s sharp, questioning look, he said, “She took the uniform to decon. She touched this stuff.”

“It wasn’t active.” Tony told him. “Seriously Cap, that stuff—it was bioorganic, but inert.”

Relief poured out of him, and he wanted to put his hand on the desk.

“But that stuff they hit you with wasn’t,” Tony continued, and he glanced down at his arm. The flesh still burned, but it wasn’t that bad. Whatever Tony had sprayed on it seemed to be helping. How much of the burn was from the sludge and how much from the decon, he couldn’t be sure. “Full decontamination—all of us, on the quinjet, at back the compound. No arguments.” He tacked on the last when Sam looked ready to protest. “These folks thought they had it figured out, I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

No. No they didn’t.

 

 

**Tony**

 

 

“How we doing out there Vision?” He kept Cap in his periphery, and put Friday on monitoring his vitals. Once they were aboard the quinjet, he was putting Cap in isolation and running his blood work.

“I have managed to quarantine the affected once the trenches extended more than twelve feet deep, all around. For now I believe their threat is neutralized, but they are by no means quiescent.”

Bless Red for having the foresight to have Friday run that analysis, or they’d already be running behind. “Make a last sweep,” he told Vision, and then glanced at Cap and Wilson. “You guys, too. Wait for me at the doors, and we’ll head out together It’ll be a couple more minutes to finish downloading.”

“And remember,” he called as the pair headed out of the communications hub to do another sweep.

“Don’t open any doors,” Wilson finished for him. “Trust me, no doors will be opened. I’ve seen that movie. It didn’t even end well for the dog.”

After they were gone, Tony whirled back to the screen and reinitiated the self-destruct sequence the lockdown had begun, and he’d halted when he and Friday broke in.

His fingers hesitated over the command, but he wasn’t the one who’d made it. The base commander had inputted the correct codes to make sure it happened… “Baby Girl is there a log or a record anywhere for the latest updates or orders?”

“Checking Boss, I have most of the data uploaded to the satellite, including the chemical breakdowns of the cores. They hadn’t had time to do much when containment broke.”

“Great, the log?” He drummed his fingers. There were at least a hundred and fifty beings in the bunker—he hesitated to call them people, because he wasn’t sure how much of people was left inside of these things. Frankly, turning the base over to Talbot or anyone else didn’t seem like a stellar idea. These guys couldn’t contain it when it had been a frozen core.

“Found it, encrypted, but I can break it.” Friday sounded distracted, but she had a lot of items on her list. “There we go. Last entry was dated ten hours ago, Colonel Robert Miller, base commander, initiated lockdown protocols and full containment self-destruct. A copy of the orders were transmitted to his command structure, acknowledged, and approved within the hour.”

“Anyone outside the base trying to download their secure data?” Because if Talbot knew he was sending them in to get blown to hell _with_ the base, he’d likely want any information available.

“The hard lines were cut, Boss. Not sure when, but there’s no network access available. I’m streaming to our satellite, but that takes a fair amount to get all the packets across.”

“Good to know.” Talbot couldn’t get any of it either. Excellent. Until Tony knew what this crap was, no one needed to have their hands on it. “We’re shutting it down, you need anything else?”

“I got it Boss.”

Tony activated the sequence so it would pick up where they’d left off—with six minutes and change left on the counter. “Time to lock and load. Vision, get to the quinjet and get it in the air. I’ll be bringing Rogers to you.”

“I can grab Cap…”

“Don’t,” Tony ordered Wilson. He was already activating his armor as he walked. “I’ll do it.” Then off comms he said, “Friday, full decontamination suite set up at the Compound. The quinjet is going to need it, too. Don’t cut any corners.”

“Got it, Boss. Do you want me to notify Dr. Cho?”

“Yeah, I’m going to need her to examine Rogers’ bloodwork.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Steve would be fine. The serum pretty much protected him from everything, and Tony was being overcautious and paranoid. He could live with both descriptions. By the time he caught up to them, he ignored Sam’s questioning looks but Steve wasn’t arguing. They got the doors released and the quinjet hovered a few feet off the ground. The Walking Mud in their containment area grew more agitated, but Tony caught Steve under the arms and lifted him.

“You’re going right into isolation, Cap.” The quinjet had been designed to support them on their missions with a lot of changes Tony had made himself, but the isolation booth was a claustrophobic four x four space.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, and he slid his shield to his back as he eased inside. Everyone on him needed to be decon’d but the better decontamination units were back the compound. “Strap in Wilson. Vision, you have the route back out through the defenses?”

“I do, Mr. Stark. I would recommend you strap in as well.”

Tony ignored the advice and locked a gauntleted hand overhead. “Brace yourself, Cap.”

Steve nodded.

“Punch it Vision.” The countdown inside his helmet was just at 90 seconds. They needed to be fast to clear the airspace.

Even braced, the sharp angle and acceleration still knocked into him. Then the twist as Vision followed the exact route they’d taken in, in reverse. Good to know Tony hadn’t wasted time mapping that corridor between the anti-aircraft missiles and guns.

“We have cleared—” Vision began just as the counter on Tony’s HUD ticked to zero. The explosion was a deafening gong that rocked the quinjet, but Vision managed to stabilize them swiftly enough.

Steve shot him a look, but Tony ignored it. Steve couldn’t see his face at the moment. Sometimes, you had to make the hard call, and whatever that stuff was—it did not need to be self-replicating anywhere else. The base commander thought so, too.

The rest of the flight back was painfully tense. Steve said next to nothing, arms folded and leaning against the wall inside the iso-chamber. Wilson tried to cajole him into words, but Steve just shook his head and offered vague answers. Tony sent a message to Talbot, letting him know they’d made it but had to pull out when the self-destruct became evident.

Had they found anything?

Unfortunately, no. And they were unable to contact any survivors.

Life signs?

No human life.

Most of it wasn’t a lie, not that Tony gave a damn about lying to the man who sent them into a situation he must have realized might kill them. Or maybe he’d been hoping for it? Talbot was a hardliner, particularly where SHIELD was concerned. He’d never evinced a particular disdain for the Avengers, but that didn’t make him a fan either.

Quietly, he checked Nat’s tracker. She was still in Queens. It was where she’d headed off to that morning—and likely where she’d called from. Friday would let him know the minute she returned to the Tower, but she’d indicated it might be days.

What the hell was she doing in Queens that might take days?

Checking up on Peter seemed a given, but that wouldn’t take her days. He’d ask Rogers, but aside from their audience, he didn’t think the man would volunteer the information.

At the compound, they put the quinjet in an isolated hanger—it was designed for just such events. A hazmat team would clean it thoroughly and decontaminate everything inside and out. He sent Wilson and Vision off to their own decontamination showers while escorting Rogers himself.

Once he had Steve in a new isolation room, and his armor stripped clean, Tony took his own shower. He made it back in time to see Cho taking the blood samples. Dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt, Rogers looked fine. The red scald on his forearm had already diminished. In a couple of hours it would probably be gone entirely.

“Maintain hazardous materials protocol on the blood, Doc.”

“So you said, Mr. Stark. I admit, I’m very curious about what you think I’ll find.”

“That makes two of us, but I’m betting on nothing.” Hoping for it was more like, but he still thought he was being overcautious.

Steve could live with overcautious. Whereas careless might get him killed.

Then finally, they were alone. The isolation wing was quiet, had its own ventilation system, sound proofing, thick walls and decon chambers on all entrances and exits. Tony flipped the switch to turn off the overheads and on the UV lights, bathing the whole area in a purple-blue light.

Sliding his hands into his pockets, Tony strolled back over to the room, and studied him through the glass. He was doing his best to not compare the chamber to those at the base. Within a few hours of containment breach, they’d seen the fallout. It had already been a few hours since Steve’s exposure.

This was all good news.

“How long you think this is going to take?” Steve asked finally.

“Long enough for you and I to have a conversation.”

“Depends on what you want to talk about.” The careful response and the way Steve leaned forward, elbows on his knees didn’t suggest he was open to many topics.

“I’m pretty sure you know what I want to talk to you about,” Tony kept it cryptic. Because they could dance around it all day, and had been—rather successfully he’d thought—dealing with the very red spider in the room.

“Natasha.”

“Got it in one.” Rogers could be an open book some days, other times, not so much. It was intriguing to realize the guy who seemed to bleat about forthrightness and honesty on a regular basis could be just as cagey as the rest of them.

“If this is about the date…”

“It’s about the fact you put her in a position to cancel it.” The date he could live without, sure, it sucked. Fine. Whatever.

“I didn’t tell her to do it,” Steve said tiredly, but he wasn’t really defending himself. “When the hell were you planning on bringing up the fact you want to date her?”

“I did bring it up—to her. The person to whom I owed any kind of explanation or expression of interest.” Scratching at his goatee, Tony paced to the side. “You know Cap, for a smart guy, you can be pretty damn dumb.”

“Thanks.” The dry expression didn’t promise him anything. “Nat’s with me.”

“And Barnes,” Tony pointed out. “She’s with both of you, and you know what, that’s fine. That’s her choice. But she still has friends, Rogers. Friends who care—friends like me. Friends who want to make things a little easier for her, not harder.”

Standing, Steve walked over to the glass and folded his arms. “Friends like you who can take advantage of the situation. She likes you. But that doesn’t mean she’s available for any kind of games…”

“Games? You think this is about games?”

With an aggrieved sigh, Steve said, “Look it’s not anything personal, Tony.”

“It feels pretty damn personal, and if I were a betting man, which I am by the way since that was how we decided the terms of our date, I’m going to say it’s pretty damn personal to her. I accept that she chose you, I wonder about it, and I’ll probably be wondering for a while, but I accepted it.” Tony locked gazes with him. “But don’t ever think you get to decide who she can be friends with, because as her friend, I’m not going to let anyone control her like that.”

Steve jerked on the last line, and Tony glared at him. Because there it was. Whether intentional or not, one or both of the super twins put her in that position.

Blowing out a hard breath, he shook his head.

“It’s not like that…”

“It’s not like that or it’s not supposed to be?” Because Tony would agree on the latter.

“Both.” Steve relaxed his arms and then spread his hands. “Look, this is all still new to me, too. I’m still adapting.”

“You can handle it if it’s Barnes though.” Tony didn’t need to hear his answer to know what it would be.

“She cares about you Tony,” Steve admitted quietly. “I know it. Buck knows it. Hell, Nat knows it. But we have to have some lines. Some boundaries. It’s part of why I’m looking to get us a place.”

That was a slap in the face. “You want to move her out of the Tower to get her away from me?”

“To get her away from everyone, to get _us_ away. Our lives are crazy enough as it is, and she’s…she’s still....”

“A fugitive. And I’m working on that,” he informed him. “But you put her out there—you expose her, that could send her right back on the run. You know that right?”

“If we get a place, we can keep it secure…”

“Steve,” Tony spread one hand. “Listen to yourself. The Tower has ninety floors, we’ve got everything she could ever need, and you want her to exchange that for some three bedroom place in Bed-Stuy where she’d have to avoid the windows, never go outside, and worry about raids every day not just to get her, but to take out you and Barnes? Not to mention all the civilians around her? C’mon. You can’t be that naïve. You just can’t.”

Tony raked a hand through his hair and paced away. This was stupid. Red was his friend. He’d told her that was all they ever had to be, and she’d not asked for an ounce more. But this…this was ridiculous. He met Steve’s pained gaze.

“Here’s the thing, Rogers,” he said, because dammit, he needed to take a step back from this. He’d spent the last few weeks in Steve's back pocket and this was after Siberia, after Leipzig. They’d fallen back into a routine, but a better one. Or so he’d thought. But maybe he’d just been fooling himself. Sold himself a bill of goods, because it was best for the team.

Best for Red.

“I know you’re not stupid, and I know you’re not selfish. If your reasoning for moving out is because you’re worried about me, then let me put your mind at ease. Until the day Red says she wants something more with me, the only thing I’ll ever be is her friend, and you can take her to a different borough, buy a house, and plant flowers in the front yard, and I’ll be by often—cause she’s my _friend_. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you’re the one who needs to move—not her.”

His head hurt. He really had thought they were past this. It had been going so well, and he sends her a joke to make her smile and they end up here.

“Tony…”

“You know what I don’t care. We can talk about this later. Stay in the iso chamber until Cho clears your blood work. If we don’t see anything in the next couple of hours I think we’re in the clear.”

“Tony. Don’t walk away.”

“No I think it’s better I walk away. We can finish this another time, when you’re not in there and I don’t have a world changing puzzle to solve. Probably better to focus our skills where they’re needed.”

He walked away.

Instead of lingering at the Compound, he put his armor on and made the flight back to the Tower. Red and Barnes were still gone. It would be quiet. He could get some work done.

Once in the penthouse, he let the armor retract and headed for the lab, but paused at the bar. It had been weeks—a couple of months even. He’d been good. Kept it clean, stuck to the water.

But after the day he’d had…fuck yes, he’d earned a damn drink.

 

**Steve**

Stuck in the damn isolation chamber, Steve could only watch him go. Tony wasn’t wrong. He’d handled all of this badly, and at the same time—he had to wonder if it was such a problem for Nat and Tony, maybe there was something to worry about.

Thinking like that just made his eye twitch. His mother would slap him sideways. Steve fought for his friends, why would he expect them to do any less? He could just imagine Peggy…hell, he didn’t have to imagine.

_“You still don’t know a bloody thing about women!”_

Dropping onto the bed in the corner, he tapped his head against the wall. He didn’t even have his phone in here because he forgot to grab it, and then forgot to ask Tony for one. All Bucky and Natasha knew was he was on a mission, and there’d been no word. Sam might call Buck, but then again, considering the weird tension between them, maybe not.

How did he keep screwing this up? It was going great, and then Bucky asked that question and… _I had to pile on._ She let him off the hook, sorta. She said they were still partners. That didn’t mean she forgave him.

God, it would have been so much easier if she got mad at him.

But she didn’t get mad.

He banged his head against the wall again, then stared at the clock as the seconds ticked by with regular slowness.

As soon as he was out of here, he planned on fixing it. Hopefully Bucky had managed to do some repairs in his absence. Then again, thinking about the expression on his face when he demanded an answer from her—he might have made it worse.

His gaze went back to the clock. It had been less than five minutes since Tony left.

And he’d said another couple of hours.

This was worse than being in the ice.

At least he’d been unaware most of the time there.


	13. Ambush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha deals with Peter not following the rules, and other issues coming up.

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Ambush**

**Natasha**

 

 

It was late when she made her way past the ruins of Delmar’s Deli-Grocery. The shattered windows had been boarded over. The glass and other debris swept away. Someone had spray-painted a spider on one of the oak boards window and the other said _coming back soon._ Ironic? Perhaps. Yet it was also the sign of an appreciative neighborhood.

Caddy corner, across the street, was the boarded over and sealed up lobby of a bank. The twisted metal struts, once jutting outwards, had been cleaned up most likely with an acetylene torch. Like the deli though, it was dark and waiting for the construction crews that would eventually get around to making repairs.

Her low-heeled boots clicked against the cracked and uneven pavement as she rounded the corner. The city would have to fix several squares of the sidewalk, more than one had buckled as a result of the explosion, which devastated both buildings. Modified chitauri weaponry.

Wonderful.

The world needed more of that wandering around.

The coffee was still hot and warmed her. The fingerless gloves didn’t do much for keeping the chill away from her fingertips. It was late, though, and she’d been strolling for a couple of hours. Another hour to go, and she’d make her way back to Elmhurst. It was a little after eleven, and the neighborhood around her had darkened as it went to sleep.

Taking a short cut between a pair of buildings, she avoided the unpleasant puddle left behind by the rain. Fifteen steps and the awareness of being watched rippled up her spine. She took a long drink of coffee, and then stumbled a half step. It was late, she was tired, and she just wanted to get home and out of the chill. A second set of steps began to shadow hers. They paused when she did, then picked up their pace when she resumed.

A rush of air warned her the watcher had abandoned his observation in favor of interception. It took a force of will not to react when a hand seized her arm and spun her around. The coffee cup went flying, only to bounce off the wall and onto the pavement. The remnants of its contents spilling around it like a steady bleed from a wound.

There was a very large, if dull and uncared for knife in her face. For the love of weapons, had the man never met a whetstone? Did he not notice or simply not care about the number of nicks along the edge of the blade? The man fisted the strap of the purse she’d strung cross-bodied under her jacket. The knit cap he wore covered his forehead and ears, but left his blunt face, and its twice broken nose on full display.

“Give me this or I’m going to cut you,” he ordered, waving the blade at it her. He fisted it in a too tight grip. The chokehold on the hilt meant he had exactly two ways he could attack with it, a slashing motion, which could do some damage based on the blade’s condition, and a short, forward thrust. The stiffness in his elbow suggested he’d be more likely to rely on the former than the latter.

Still, she had a part to play so she gasped. Eyes wide, she affected the trembling to shiver her whole body as she stared at the man looming out of the shadow at her as he pressed the knife closer.

“Are you deaf?” He challenged her, his breath reeking of too many onions, cigarettes, and cheap beer. “Give me the purse you stupid bitch.”

Really? Why did men always go for the easiest insult? It was like they didn’t even try. She pulled back a step, shifting her center of gravity as she kept her movements jerky, uncoordinated, and uneven. In most situations when confronted by a man arguably a few inches taller, and definitely several pounds heavier, and said man wielded a weapon, most people would react in varying stages of fight or flight.

If she had to endure his breath one more minute, she debated reconfiguring her plan. Of course, tall, rancid, and smelly shoving her backwards and deeper into the alley between the buildings meant she splashed some of the best not to identify contents of the puddle on her boots until he unceremoniously pushed her against the building.

He was now one large shadow blocking out the light, and the blade pressed even closer to her face, catching the reflection of the lonely street lamp on the corner with one pitted edge. Fisting the strap of her purse with one hand, she engaged in a tug of war the guy couldn’t win unless he cut the strap, or cut her and dragged the jacket off. It was futile, but he gave her a hard shake.

“Give it to me!”

Exactly ninety seconds had passed since he’d come after her in the alley. Maybe she should scream? That was pretty much the expected pathology, though she’d encountered her fare share of mugging victims. Most of them didn’t scream, they just cooperated and walked away, a little bruised and ego dented, but alive to endure the aggravating process of canceling all their credit cards and having to order a new metro card.

“Um—excuse me!” A young, familiar voice called. “I don’t think that’s the right color for you man, it definitely doesn’t go with your outfit.”

Oh. Good. She was really over this particular role, anyway.

Her assailant twisted revealing the alley around them and the fact no one stood there.

She definitely didn’t look up.

“Yoo hoo,” the playful voice called. “Made you look.” Since he twisted, the blade was away from her face. Then it was out of the guy’s hand and clattered against the cement where it suddenly vanished beneath a splat of webbing. Her assailant jerked, and yanked her to him where he still held on to the strap.

Spinning around, he slammed her back to his front and had a hand around her throat. Thanks to the fumes rising off her captor, the tears slipping out of her eyes didn’t need any effort. This guy smelled so bad, she might need a week of showers to get it off of her.

“Where are you?” The guy twitched as he retreated from the wall to the center of the alley. The angle let her see upward without effort. Spider-Man clung to the wall just a few feet above where she and the trash can man had been standing. “Stay away from me you freak, or I’ll…I’ll break her neck.”

Despite the large hand closing tightly over her throat and putting pressure on the arteries, he hadn’t actually cut off her windpipe. Inhaling slow, but deep, she filled her lungs in case he figured out what he was doing. Despite his threat, he didn’t have the torque in that elbow to snap her neck.

“Aww, c’mon man. I’ve got a lot of homework to do, and I should have been home an hour ago. So why don’t you make this easier on yourself. Just let the nice lady go.” The soothing invitation was both amusing, and a little irritating. In continuing the dialogue, Spider-Man gave up the element of surprise because the body holding hers went rigid as he caught sight of the web-slinger.

“I mean it…”

“Yeah, but c’mon, you don’t want to hurt the nice lady. I mean, she’s a nice lady—you’re a nice lady, right?” Spider-Man switched his attention to her, at least, that was what the tilt to his head suggested. The shadow created by the hoodie and the ski mask didn't let her see his eyes. “So what do you say—you let her go, I let you go, and we all get to go home?”

The wind shifted, a little and there was a hint of thunder in the distance. What a perfect time for the weather to make good on its threat of rain.

“Go away,” her captor ordered, his voice warbling up a notch from hoarse threat to actual fear. “I mean it, I’ll break her neck.” He tightened his grip. This time he cut off her air. She didn’t struggle, kept her stance loose, and her body boneless. The mental countdown of six minutes ticked away in her head.

“I really wish you’d just let her go,” Spider-Man sounded almost apologetic. “Don’t worry, ma’am…I’ll catch you!”

Her eyebrow inched upward, but she didn’t have time to complete the thought before she, and her captor went skyrocketing up. The guy holding her let out a yelp and let go, the natural instinct to save himself had him scrambling, and then he was hitting the wall. She couldn’t quite twist to see him, but there were three splats—webbing perhaps? But the guy wasn’t shouting anymore.

Still, she turned as the momentum of the swing brought her toward the same wall, but she never connected. The snap of the web holding her, landed her against the kid, and then he was up the wall and settling her on the roof.

“Be right back,” he told her. “Promise.”

Then he leapt off the building in a somersault and headed back to the alley. It took him just a couple of minutes to detach the mugger from the building, then move him to a spot under an awning across the street. He lashed him in place with webbing, then pulled out the guy’s phone from his pocket.

“Hi, 911? Yeah, this is your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, I apprehended a mugger, he’s at…” He recited off the address. “Just more of an attempted mugging and assault. The very nice lady he had is okay. I’ll leave the phone on for you.” Then he tucked the phone into the guy’s shirtfront and waved a finger at him. “You could have done it the easy way, but you should stay dry under here until the patrol gets here. Okay—bye!”

Then the kid bounded across the street as he fired a web and shot upward. Dressed in dark jeans, a red hoodie, and a modified ski mask, he lacked the iconic figure he’d cut in the suit, but he definitely still had the same moves. He landed on the roof a couple of feet from her.

“You okay ma’am?” He was so damn earnest. “Sorry that took me a little longer than I thought it would. Didn’t want him to actually get scared and cut you before I got the knife away from him.”

She almost felt bad for what was about to happen.

Almost.

Arms folded in front of her like she was trying to keep herself together, she didn’t react at all until he was immediately before her. “I promise,” he said holding out a hand. “The ride down won’t be so scary.”

Loosening her pose, she reached out to take his hand.

“I promise,” he added. “I’m not getting handsy.” He slipped her arm up over his shoulders and then around his neck as he wrapped his arm around her waist.

The moment his fingers closed over her side, she murmured, “Sorry, Peter.”

His head jerked up, and then he let out a garbled sound as her widow’s bite impacted on his neck. The voltage wouldn’t hurt him—much—but it overloaded his system and she caught him before he hit the ground. The sting of it rippled through him, and into her, but she’d been prepared for it. The fact his muscles spasmed had his fingers biting into her side—that would leave a mark—but he was out before he could really hurt her.

A siren in the distance said the cops he’d called were on the way, but she and Peter were on the roof. The object of the lesson had been delivered, but the point would need to wait a beat—or three—for him to wake up. Pressing her shoulder into his midsection, she hoisted him over her shoulders and crossed the open roof to a lean to someone had set up. It had a couple of pool chairs, a rickety table with an ashtray. She settled him into one of the chairs, and made sure his head was to the side and his airways open, before sitting on the other chair to wait. If she were the Red Room, he’d wake up in restraints, in a very dark room, and to a lot of pain.

She wasn’t.

The embarrassment alone was going to be downright uncomfortable for the kid, and hopefully enough to knock some sense into him. She really didn’t see the need to get too creative, yet.

Twenty minutes later—give or take—and after the rain began to fall steadily, Peter woke up with a jerk. His flailing sent him right out of the chair and onto the roof’s surface, where the cold rain soaked his mask. Natasha didn’t move, she just sat calmly while he got his bearings, and then he whipped his gaze to her.

“You…” He began as he scrambled to his feet.

“Hi Peter,” she said, reaching up to deactivate the photo static veil, then pulling it off along with the wig. His eyes grew wider if possible. “Do you remember what I said about going on patrol?”

“Um…it’s not what it looks like.” His hood had fallen back, and he took a step out of the rain. Pulling off his ski mask, he revealed his forlorn expression crowned by the dark hair clinging damply to his face.

“No?” She kept it smooth and even. “Tell me, what is it like?”

“I was on my way home from school,” he began, but he was a terrible liar and his voice tripped over the word school. So sure, he’d been on his way home—since they were six blocks from the apartment he shared with his aunt, but he wasn’t on his way home from school. “And I saw a lady in the alley getting mugged—wait—I saw _you_ in the alley getting mugged.” He frowned. “You weren’t getting mugged were you?”

“He thought he was mugging me.”

“Well yeah, and he had that big knife, and Ms. Romanoff…”

“Natasha,” she reminded him.

“Natasha…I couldn’t just pass by, you know. It wouldn’t have been right. I mean I didn’t know it was you and that you didn’t need help, but even if I’d known it was you, I’d still help, because you know…” The words spilled out at high speed, then skittered to a halt. “I’m in trouble aren’t I?”

“Do you remember what I said about your predictability?” She settled the wig against her crisscrossed legs as she studied him.

“That I ran the same patrol pattern every day.”

“Hmm-hmm. And do you know what time each evening you make a sweep through here after finishing your evening patrol?”

She didn’t think he could manage to look more crestfallen if he tried. “Probably about…” He stole a look at his watch, his hands alternately flexing between half-fists and loosened like he couldn’t decide what to do with them. “…a half hour ago.”

“Give or take,” she told him agreeably. “So tell me, what did you do wrong?”

There were lots of ways to do this. She could give him a stern lecture, but she wasn’t his parent. She could reprimand him, but at the moment, he’d already risked having her train him—so she wasn’t his teacher. Frankly, they didn’t know each other well enough for her to just give him a ration of shit for his reckless, impulsive, and headstrong decisions.

He’d done the right thing in trying to help someone, but because he was in the wrong place based on their deal. That made navigating the tightrope between lesson and cruelty a slim place to be.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he winced and then blinked. “Did you tase me?”

She pushed up the sleeve of her jacket to show the widow’s bite and his eyes grew large. “I saw those at the airport, but I didn’t get to see you use them…you can fire them at a distance can’t you?” He took a half a step closer, then dropped to sit on the other pool chair, hand partially extended to touch the bite.

“Yes I can, and Peter—focus.” She tugged the jacket down over it, and removing the shiny object. Enhanced senses and smart kid meant easily distractible because he was literally juggling far too much input.

“Sorry,” he said, and gave her a half smile. “But those are really cool.”

“They’re a weapon,” she told him bluntly. “They are a tool, and they help me take down people who are significantly stronger than I am with non-lethal force.”

She didn’t add as evidenced by the fact she took him down.

“You only got me because I was trying to help you,” he argued, and then paused. It took a couple of beats, but she could virtually hear the ticking in his brain as he followed the thought. “It was a trap. You…set up an ambush.” His tone waxed from surprise to dismay. “You let that guy almost hurt you so you could catch me on patrol.”

Waiting patiently, she let him work it out.

“Natasha, he had a knife in your face.” The kid genuinely looked worried. “Why would you do that?”

“There are many reasons to use natural vulnerability against an opponent, even one who means well by trying to help everyone around them.” Peter Parker’s greatest and most exploitable weakness, he wanted to help people so desperately. She understood it, and she even admired it, but he needed to see it so he could protect himself even when he rushed into the burning buildings and dark alleys of the neighborhood he wanted to protect.

The quiet admonishment registered. “Are you mad?”

“No,” she answered him honestly and then didn’t laugh when he gaped at her.

“But I broke our deal…” He made a face, like he couldn’t believe he’d said that, the words slipping out.

“Yes you did,” she agreed with him.

“But you’re not mad?”

“No.” She gave him the barest of head shakes.

The kid frowned, and then leaned toward her slightly. “But I—I didn’t listen.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“So why aren’t you mad?” Truly puzzled, he studied her. The intensity in his gaze gave her the first real smile she’d felt in hours. His brain was working now. He fought to ferret out her motivations, to understand her inexplicable to him reaction. It brightened what had become a long, and very much disappointing day.

“Because getting angry doesn’t solve anything,” she told him truthfully. “Getting angry is an emotional response to disappointment, fear, and aggravation. It’s a moment when the sympathetic nervous system is overwhelmed by fight or flight, and you need the adrenaline to keep you alive. Early humans needed everything they had to survive in the most intense situations—and it was real survival, not just arguing with traffic or being frustrated by a bad grade or the fact the VCR didn’t record your show because the power flickered.”

“VCR?” he repeated. “Nobody uses VCRs anymore. I mean, I do sometimes when I find one in the dumpster, but most people don’t have them anymore so I can’t even harvest them for parts.” He must have finally noticed her droll look because he winced, then added, “So, you never get angry?”

“I’m sure I have, and I’m sure I will again. But anger doesn’t let me keep my mind clear, or focused. Anger doesn’t make me a better fighter, because instead of assessing a threat tactically and responding to it, I would be trying to inflict maximum damage. Not every fight is won because you’re bigger or stronger.”

That snared his interest.

“Not every fight can be won by who has the big guns. Anger clouds judgment, it doesn’t enhance it. Anger demands a reaction, even when a reaction might be utterly misplaced and irreversible.” Like Tony’s reaction to learning James had been used to kill his parents. Like Steve’s reaction to the Accords and James being the subject of a manhunt because Zemo framed him.

Like her failure to see the unfolding play because she’d been too preoccupied with the churning emotions at play as the Avengers began to pull themselves apart and men she admired squared off against each other. Those were the things anger cost. It was why Bruce couldn’t handle the other guy, because the other guy appeared when he let his anger consume him.

Pulling her thoughts off that path, she focused back on Peter. “So no, I’m not angry,” she summarized.

Peter ran his hand through his hair, and looked down. The weight of his actions settled against him, the pressure unbearable based on the play of emotion across his face. He’d done the right thing, he’d helped someone—but in doing so, he’d tipped his hand about disobeying the rule she’d given him, and now his training was at risk. Training he seemed to genuinely want despite his surprise the day before.

It seemed weeks ago, not twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d been sending him home and heading up to the roof with Steve. They’d worked out a lot of the tangled complications between them, or so she’d thought. It had been…nice. She’d relaxed, and pushed herself to let him in and relaxed the distance she preferred.

If people got too close, they could ambush you. As she had with Peter in the alley.

As Steve and James had at the safe house. After Steve left for the mission, she’d sat with James for a while but she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him. Instead, she’d focused on her work and shut him out. It took effort, almost too much effort, to evade the very real sense of betrayal their challenge and doubt raked through her.

And she didn’t have time to retreat into that melancholy pool.

“I’m sorry, Natasha,” Peter said finally. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your rule. I know why you want to me to avoid patrol, but…people need help. I helped some people tonight. I helped a kid catch her dog when he ran away, and she would have chased him into the closed park. I helped an old lady carry her groceries. I stopped a couple of car thieves. And I made sure that Mr. Omnybivak’s flower shop would still be able to open tomorrow, and the guys who wanted to break the glass couldn’t. And while I know it was you and you weren’t in any danger—you know obviously because it’s you—I stopped to help a nice lady not get hurt by a guy who just wanted the money in her wallet so he could get his next fix.” He licked his lips, and spread his hands. “I know that’s not a lot for you guys, I know you fight a lot bigger problems. But we don’t have alien invasions every day, and big terrorist organizations trying to blow people up with their crazy gun laden hellicarriers or even wild robots blowing up the Stark Expo. That doesn’t happen every day. The Avengers are great for that, and we need the Avengers…but Queens? Queens needs me too, and they need me every night.”

Sweat prickled along his face, and he lifted his chin. There was a very real sense of worry amidst the defiance in his eyes, but he didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t snap out the words, he spoke deeply and truly and he never once looked away from her.

“I can’t not help. If that means you won’t train me, then…I accept that. I’m sorry you’re disappointed in me.”

“You didn’t disappoint me,” she gentled her voice; because what he needed right now was validation. She couldn’t condone his choices, not fully, but she couldn’t fault them fully either. “If anything you proved a little bit about who you are.”

Erskine’s hypothesis—his formula would make a good man great, and a bad man worse. It would emphasize a person’s most natural and basic qualities. Peter Parker was a good kid, and someday he’d be a great man. But he needed to live that long. Maybe the formula in the Oz that affected the spider hadn’t been derived from her blood. After everything she’d seen in the projects Leonid and Alexei had been running, what she knew about Ross and his own forays into super soldier serum—just thinking about Blonsky made her skin cold—there was a more than equal chance that Peter got some of that ability from her. Some.

Definitely not all.

She almost wondered what Erskine would think of his work all these decades later, even after so many tried to pervert it, they still ended up with a Peter Parker.

“Is that a good thing, Natasha?” Peter asked, pulling her once again from the wandering path of speculation.

“Sometimes,” she told him, but the lesson wasn’t wholly over. “Can you tell me what you did wrong? Down there in the alley?”

The rain spattered against the roof of their little shelter, the damp breeze growing steadily colder even seeping through her jacket.

Instead of blithely dismissing the question, Peter turned his ski mask over in his hand as he considered it. “I focused on getting the knife away from you without letting him hurt you.”

“You did that very well.” He deserved the compliment.

A small smile tugged at his lips, and his shoulders eased. “But when he grabbed you like that, he had you by the throat—that’s a pretty vulnerable place. If he squeezed too hard he could knock you out or kill you.”

She nodded.

“I know it probably put someone not you in a little more risk to web you both up, but surprise is a big factor and most people aren’t expecting that. And I knew I could catch you.”

“Surprise is always a good tactic. It keeps the opposition off guard, and buys you extra seconds to complete a task. Sometimes all you need is one or two.”

He nodded eagerly, warming to it. “He’s heavier, so he swung a little faster and when you startle most people shove away from something, it’s instinct. Which mean I knew he’d shove away from you, that would increase his momentum and give you a couple more seconds before you’d follow him toward the wall—and that meant I had time to web him up and catch you.”

“You calculated all of that in your head, in those few moments.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m pretty good at math,” Peter gave her a lopsided, self-conscious smile.

“Apparently,” she tempered the compliment. The kid didn’t need to get cocky on her now. “So then you can tell me what you did wrong, in all your calculations…what one thing did you not factor in?”

Peter’s cheerful expression faded and he frowned. The he used his fingers to tick off, “I caught you, I caught him. I got him secure, and then I brought you up here so I could go down and take care of him. Moved him across the street, called the cops, and then came to get you down and…oh.”

His expression collapsed.

Natasha disciplined her expression to reveal nothing as Peter worked it through.

“I put your arm around my neck cause I didn’t want you to be scared on the way down.” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “That’s when you shocked me.” She let it play out as he rubbed at the slightly reddened spot where the bite had bitten him. “I assumed you…you were harmless. I assumed you were the victim, so I wasn’t on my guard, at all and…I just made it easy.”

“Yes you did.” And now to soften the blow. “Most people think of women as vulnerable, we are often referred to as the weaker sex, after all. We’re smaller, we tend to be lighter, and on a whole, people who are larger and stronger can physically overwhelm us, thus we’re rarely seen as a threat. Believe me when I tell you, I’ve had years of experience using that belief against men, all of them older and reportedly far more experienced than you are.”

“Not really sure that makes me feel better.”

“No?” She let a smile out. “Would it make you feel better to know I fooled Tony similarly?”

His eyes grew. “What?”

“Ask him how we met sometime, he’ll definitely tell you I stabbed him in the neck.”

Peter gaped. “With your bites?”

“Not quite. Just ask him—it’ll be worth it for the expression on his face.” Sobering, she reached out a hand to him. He’d been isolated enough, chastised enough, and made to feel like a screw up, enough. For just a split-second, he hesitated, then he took her hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze. “You made a mistake, and that’s normal. That’s why you need you training. But the goal isn’t to beat yourself up about the mistake, it’s to learn from it so the next time someone wants to put you in a vulnerable position because of their vulnerability, you’ll be a little warier, a little more on your guard. You only need someone to slip by a couple of seconds to take out a mugger and prevent someone harm. Conversely, they only need you to drop your vigilance for a couple of seconds to harm _you_. And all that strength, and agility, and brains—that wouldn’t have saved you. You were out for twenty minutes, Peter. In my world, that might mean you don’t wake up at all.”

He sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll do better, Natasha.”

“I know you will.” The kid didn’t have any other mode. He was an overachiever to the core.

“Does that mean I am still calling you tomorrow?” It wasn’t quite a sly look, but he couldn’t quite contain the hopefulness in his eyes.

“No,” she told him gently, then softened it by squeezing his hand. “For two reasons, one you broke the rule so you do need to face that consequence, and two…I have a job I need to go and do.”

He straightened. “A job? Aren’t you supposed to be in hiding?” Then the oh shit crossed his face. She was supposed to be hiding but she was out here sitting on a roof top in Queens because she’d known he wouldn’t be able to control the impulse to patrol. She’d known it, counted on it, and used it against him to make a point.

“I can hide in plain sight,” she murmured, gesturing to the mask and the wig. “Don’t worry about me. Since I could be gone for a few days, I’ll send you a message when I get back.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “Are you sure I can’t help?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I can help though, sometimes, if you need it. Even if you just need backup.”

She probably shouldn’t dangle anything in front of the kid if she wasn’t prepared to follow through with it. “Maybe—if you can prove that I can trust you to follow the rules, and to train, and to think.”

“I will, I pro—”

She silenced the promise with a finger to her lips. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. It’s better to tell me you will do your best.”

“I’ll do my best,” he relented. “I really am sorry that I didn’t listen.”

“Will you listen better in the future?” She released his hand, and settled the photo static veil into place, before tugging the wig on and smoothing it over. The veil activated with a light touch and Peter gave her a wide-eyed blink.

“I’m going to do my best—and that’s wicked awesome cool, when do I get one?”

“We’ll see,” she murmured. “Now let’s get you home, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“You don’t have to walk me home,” he said, all shy kid again.

“No, but I want to.” She pulled her own hood up, and walked out from under the shelter. The rain wasn’t heavy, even if it continued to fall steadily. There was a fire escape she could drop onto, and then climb the rest of the way down. Peter followed her, tugging his own hood up futilely to protect his already wet hair. The ski mask was on his hand, so he stuffed it into his pocket.

“I can give you a lift down if you don’t tase me again,” he offered. “I’d like to show you I can do it…maybe win a few points in the style department?”

The corners of her mouth twitched and she held up three fingers. “I won’t tase you, Scout’s Honor.”

“That’s not a scout sign.”

“That’s good because I never was one.”

He laughed. Then stepped toward her, and frowned a minute…before he nudged her shoulder so she turned slightly away. He wrapped an arm around her waist and then he just jumped. He landed lightly on the next roof, sprinting across it, and then the next before he fired a webbing. They sailed out and over from the rooftop to land on the street, a block over and up from the deli. It was still quiet, and Peter touched them to the ground then set her on her feet after he was steady.

Wearing a shy, if a bit smug grin, he looked at her. “Better, right?”

Better because he hadn’t let her grab onto him at all. “Was that harder for you to control?” Because he’d had to run, leap, and swing. By controlling her weight and not letting her help, he also had to deal with a slightly off center of gravity.

“Not so much.” The fact he gave it a beat to think about it, and glanced upward first, added an element of truth telling. “Might be harder if something else was going on—you know, falling building. Bomb in the elevator shaft. People screaming.”

“That happen often?” His description being incredibly specific.

“No…and hope it doesn’t, but it has happened.” He fell into step with her, adjusting his backpack as he walked. “But sometimes, sometimes I feel like I should be doing more.”

‘And someday you will.” Of that she had no doubt. “But you’re still a kid…”

“I’m fifteen.”

“You’re still a kid,” she repeated. “You should embrace it. Let yourself be a kid, because once you grow up…you don’t get to go back.”

Peter frowned, chewing over the words in his head. He tucked his head down to avoid the rain drizzling on them, but he kept glancing at her. “Is that what happened to you?”

“Is what what happened to me?” She kept her head on a swivel, Peter was almost too focused on her and just walking home and not enough on his surroundings.

It wasn’t a luxury she’d ever been afforded.

“You grew up and you wanted to go back to being a kid?”

She’d never been a child. “Something like that. It’s easy to fall into the trap of what you think you should be doing, and miss out on what you need to be doing.”

He considered that for a few steps, then asked. “Why does anyone need to be a kid? You’re helpless, you have to do what people tell you, and sometimes…sometimes people leave and nothing you do changes that.”

“That’s true at any age. Anyone can be made helpless.”

“Even you?” The question was wild with skepticism.

“Even me,” she assured him. “I’ve had to follow orders. Followed them for most of my life.” Survived Ivan controlling her, Karpov, Madame B, and then the other officers at the KGB. She’d survived SHIELD, and Nick. She’d even survived the Avengers. “Peter, you can’t make other people change. You can want it, you can need it, and you can fight for it—but there’s only one person you can control. Only one person you should ever control. You.”

“Except where training is concerned, right?” He turned sideways to look at her as he walked. “Training is where you have all the control.”

“Do I?” The photo static veil could mask her micro-expressions for her, but she raised her eyebrows anyway. “Where did I find you tonight?”

He winced. “Probably not smart to keep bringing that up.”

“Maybe.” They were on his block and she slowed as they reached his building. “It’s your choice, Peter. If you want me to train you, I will. But you have to choose to follow the rules. You have to choose to listen to me when I tell you that I have been around a long time, and I know a lot more than you think.”

“You can’t be more than ten years older than me,” but even as he made the claim, he reddened. “Not that I’m asking cause you don’t ask girls their age…but you’re not that much older, are you?”

“V tikhom omute cherti vodyatsya, malen'kiy pauk. Spokoynoy nochi.” She turned to leave him.

“What was that?” Peter asked, his voice quiet so it wouldn’t carry.

“It’s Russian,” she said, glancing back at him once. “It means get your ass inside and do your homework. You have school tomorrow.” Not really, but he didn't need to know that.

He made a face. “Good night…” He didn’t add her name.

Good boy.

She nodded.

“Spokoynoy nochi.”

He blinked, then tried to repeat it, but she shook her head and kept walking. When she reached the corner, he’d vanished from the sidewalk. She let her gaze climb the buildings around her, scanning for him. It would be just like him to decide to _walk_ her home after that, even after their conversation.

But she didn’t see him. Crossing the street, she glanced toward the building where he and his aunt lived in their little apartment. A light came on in the window she knew was his bedroom.

Satisfied, she followed the street towards sixteenth. She hadn’t even made the block before the motorcycle idled up to the curb. James glanced at her, and he didn’t pretend he hadn’t been following her. Which was good, she didn’t pretend to apologize for slipping out of the safe house and leaving him. The rain flattened his dark hair and left it hanging around his face.

“Sam texted,” he said when she arrived next to the bike. “There was a problem on the mission.”

Her gut tightened. “Steve?”

“He’s in isolation at the Compound.” He frowned. The Compound meant she couldn’t go. “They don’t think it’s bad, but something about blood work, I don’t know. I tried to call Stark, but he didn’t answer.”

There were a lot of reasons Tony might not answer. “How long?”

“An hour ago, after they’d run the blood work twice.” His neutral tone did very little to disguise the worry in his eyes. “I need to ride up there.”

Yes, he did. “Go, I’ll get back to the Tower. Text me…”

“Get on,” James interrupted. “I’ll take you there myself. Steve will worry if I don’t.”

“Steve will worry even if you do.” She wasn’t having this argument. “I can get back on my own, and I need stuff from the house.” She needed the files, and the phones. “Go, Steve shouldn’t be alone.”

“Get. On.” The snap of command was all Soldat. “I did not interfere when you let that man strangle you. You will give me this.”

It wasn’t a request and she already balked at the explicit order. But if she made this an issue, which she could, it would delay him even longer from getting to Steve. “Fine.” She slid onto the bike behind him, and ignored the way the cold damp settled into her bones.

Without further comment, he accelerated away from the curb. It took them under ten minutes to make it back to the safe house, then three minutes for her to grab the folders and phones. Once back on the bike, James opened the throttle. The Queensboro Bridge was swift this time of night, the flow of traffic thinning if never stopping. Thirty-five minutes after picking her up, James pulled into the garage of the Tower, Friday had it open for them.

Natasha was frozen to the bone, but she didn’t complain. Sliding off the bike, she looked at him. “Text me after you see him?”

He nodded, and when she would have turned away, he caught her hand. “Natalia?”

“James, you should go.”

“You’re angry with me.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” she told him, almost tiredly. “I’m not.” Then she met his gaze. “It’s late, I’m tired. You’re telling me something is wrong with Steve, and I can’t go to where he is.” She couldn’t follow them in or out of battle apparently. “It’s going to take you at least an hour to get up there. So go take care of him.”

“You know…we didn’t mean it.” But that was a lie, and he knew better.

She stripped off the photo static veil and stared at him. “Do I?”

His jaw tightened. “You left earlier without telling me.”

“Yes.” She wouldn’t shy away from this.

“You promised you wouldn’t.”

She nodded. “I know.” Meeting his gaze, she waited. She was cold, wet, and now worried. But she’d stand here all night. Soldat didn’t get to decide for her or order her around. Nor did James or Steve. They’d expressed their distrust quite clearly. That hurt. She wouldn’t lie about that either.

“Don’t do it again?” It was more of a question this time.

“I’m not going to make any promises,” she informed him. “Not when you won’t believe them.”

“I will.”

“You want to,” she corrected. “And that will have to be enough for us right now, James.”

His fist clenched, and he exhaled. “Tell me how I can fix this.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Because I don’t know. Right now…you need to go see if Steve is all right. You need to be there because I can’t.”

“Will you be here when we get back?” Tension narrowed the words.

“It depends, if I get the call about the kid, I have to go.” The kidnapped child didn’t have time for them to figure out the tangled weave of their issues.

James tilted his head back, and then he looked at her his expression torn between anger and despair before it vanished behind a cool mask. They both wore them so well. “I’ll call as soon as I get to Steve.”

She nodded.

“Be careful.” But she needn’t have bothered, he’d already turned the bike and headed out of the garage. The sound of the rolling door, the only noise in the garage. She tugged out her phone, checking it for the first time since leaving to shadow Spider-Man’s patrol route. There were no messages. James had been following her, so that was to be expected. But Steve hadn’t sent one either. Nor had Clint.

Was she not supposed to know?

After pocketing the phone, she stood there for a moment, staring at all of the cars Tony kept here, and a couple of others—like the jeep that Bruce had driven when he went out into the city. It hadn’t moved from its spot in all the tine since he’d gone missing. A little nondescript sedan Clint had favored while in town was parked next to it.

Her Corvette wasn’t there. She’d parked it there before heading to Geneva by way of London. Shouldering her bag, she turned from the cars and stepped inside, the elevator doors stood open and waiting.

“Good evening, Friday.”

“Good evening, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Do you have a status on Captain Rogers?”

“Captain Rogers was exposed to a foreign substance during the course of the mission. It was similar in composition to the material on his uniform, only in this case it wasn’t inert.” The elevator rose smoothly but it left her stomach in the garage. “He has been in isolation since returning to the Compound after extensive decontamination. He does not appear to be exhibiting any symptoms, though his mood could be described as less than optimal. Mr. Wilson has been keeping him company.”

“And the bloodwork Dr. Cho ran?” Because who else would be doing it? She wasn’t a primary physician, but neither had Bruce been. They were just the doctors the team trusted and she was a geneticist. If anyone could identify something wrong in Steve’s blood, it would be her.

“Anomalous. She is running another set of tests now. At this time, though, it does not appear that Captain Rogers is infected.”

“But something is wrong with him.” The elevator halted on their level, but the doors didn’t open.

“Unknown at this time, Ms. Romanoff.” And she couldn’t miss the apology in her words. Sam had been with Steve, and that was probably why he hadn’t sent her a message. He literally couldn’t because Sam didn’t know.

Maybe Clint didn’t either.

He wouldn’t keep this from her, but he was also going through a recovery of her own.

The elevator doors still hadn’t opened.

“Is there something else, Friday?”

“I’m afraid, I’m not at liberty to say,” she said carefully.

“About Captain Rogers?” She tested.

“No, Ms. Romanoff. I have provided you with all the details on Captain Rogers.”

All right. “And the rest of the team that went on the mission? No one else compromised?”

“Mr. Wilson and Vision are both well within expected parameters.” So they were fine. “And neither seemed to have been exposed during the course of the mission.”

That left… “Where’s Tony, Friday?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.” So it was Tony.

“Was he exposed?”

“No, Ms. Romanoff, the Boss was not exposed and he completed a full decontamination protocol twice prior to leaving the Compound.” The AI was judiciously feeding her data.

Still dripping, and the backpack in her hand, she eyed the closed elevator doors. “Friday, can you take me up to the penthouse please?”

“I absolutely can, Ms. Romanoff, I just need your override authorization.”

Her override? “My verbal override Tony gave me in Switzerland?”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff. He has not rescinded that command.”

Oh, she was sneaky. Nat almost smiled. JARVIS had split hairs similarly, but it was a testament to their programming they could even make those distinctions.

“Then you have my override Friday, take me to the penthouse.”

“Thank you, Ms. Romanoff.”

Because Tony was there and Friday wasn’t at liberty to say for certain or what he was doing. He had his own privacy protocols, but she wanted Natasha to ask which suggested something was wrong.

Checking her knife in her belt, she shifted the bag to her other hand to free her right up. She didn’t have a glock on her, but she could improvise. The doors opened onto the penthouse level, and the living room was dark with only the city lights beyond the grand windows to give it any illumination.

Dropping the bag quietly just inside, she slipped off her boots and moved on silent feet. There was no music and no television on. Nothing to even suggest Tony was home, but Friday wouldn’t have sent her up here for no appreciable reason. She stepped into the sunken living room, making her way around the edge, but she found him—sprawled on the sofa, a drink in one hand, his gaze on the window.

“Hey,” he slurred slowly. The empty bottle of bourbon next to the sofa told her what was left in that glass. “Red. You’re back.”

“Hey Tony,” she said, studying him. “How you doing?”

“I’m great,” he told her, sitting up abruptly and then standing. He staggered a step and then sat back down with a giggle. “Just great.”

“I can see that.” Stripping off her damp hoodie, she tossed it toward the bag.

“Hate the hair Red,” he told her quite seriously. “You’d look terrible as a blonde.”

“I can pull off blonde just fine, thank you. This wig is wet.” She stripped it off, having half forgotten she even had it on. No wonder it kept drizzling down her back. Dropping it on a table, she made a note to pick it up later before she crossed over to take the glass out of Tony’s hand and then the bottle off the floor.

“It’s raining…hey—that’s mine.” He swiped for the glass, but it wasn’t even an effort to keep it away. Getting them out of his reach, she studied his appearance.

He was dressed in sweats and an oil stained t-shirt, his hair unkempt, and stubble lining his flushed cheeks. Tony usually took more care with his appearance, then again, he’d been on a mission.

“Want to talk about this?” She held up the bottle for him before dropping it into the trash.

“Not really,” Tony intoned, blearily tracking her progress with his glassy eyes. “Think you can top me off while you’re back there.”

“No, but I’ll get you some water.”

“Pfft,” he made a rough sound with his tongue and teeth. “I don’t want water. S’okay, I can do it myself…you want a drink? We used to drink together. You can _drink._ ”

“Yes, I can and no I don’t want one.” She intercepted him on the way toward the bar, and swung his arm over her shoulder and fixed hers around his waist so he didn’t fall. “You’ve had plenty. You need water, aspirin, and sleep.”

“I’m fine,” he argued, trying to weave away from her, but lacking the coordination to do so. “I can handle my liquor.”

“No doubt,” she murmured, getting up the stairs to the second floor where his bedroom was. “You also smell like a distillery. So I suggest you shower in the morning.”

“I can shower right now, wanna join me?” He tried to leer at her, but it lacked any kind of heat. If anything, it was just kind of cute. Plucking at her shirt, he muttered, “You’re already wet. Did you take a shower in your clothes?”

“It’s raining outside,” she reminded him, finally getting him into his room and setting down on the bed.

“That’s right—you said. You’re not supposed to go outside.” He caught her arm as she straightened and tugged at her. Shifting her balance, she avoided landing on him in a drunken sprawl. “’Sposed to stay safe in the Tower.”

“I was perfectly safe,” she soothed. “Now let go, and I’ll get your water.”

“You’re not supposed to go out,” he reminded her. “I’m working on the pardon. I’ll fix it, Red. I promised you I’d fix it and I’ll fix it.”

“Tony,” she said once, then had to repeat when he kept saying he’d fix it. “Tony.”

“What?” He squinted at her.

“I’m fine. You’ve done a great job on everything. Now let go, and I’ll get you some water, okay?”

This wasn’t the first time she had to get a drunk Tony into bed. He got affectionate, and a little grabby, but mostly he would just try to be charming if he didn’t lapse into sadness.

“Okay,” he conceded. “You come back, and then we’ll talk about how I can fix it. Gotta figure out the stuff, too. The stuff that got on Steve—sorry about that Red. Tried to fix it there, but it got on him. He’ll be okay.”

“Yes, I’m sure he will,” she soothed him again, packing away her own concerns. Gradually, he let go of her shirt and then patted her arm as if trying to smooth the fabric down. “There we go, now stay right there.”

She diverted into his bathroom with all of its state of the art and extremely luxurious fixtures, and filled a glass with some water, before digging out the aspirin in the cabinet. If she could get some water and aspirin into him now, she’d leave more on the bedside table. Hopefully they could circumvent the hangover waiting for him.

He gave her another smile when she reappeared and held out his hand as she pressed the aspirin into it. Though he tossed them back to dry swallow, she wrapped his hand around the glass of water. Thankfully, he didn’t make a fuss about drinking even if he kept sneaking peeks up at her.

“Better?” she asked when he lowered the glass and she rescued it before he dropped it on the floor.

“Tired,” he admitted. “Head hurts.”

“I bet.” She ran her fingers through his hair, the light action of her nails stroking his scalp should help alleviate some of the tension. “Let’s get you under the covers, shall we?”

“You trying to get me into bed?” He was suddenly all charm, and playfulness. “You don’t have to work hard, I promise.”

She chuckled, and shook her head. “Yes, Tony, I want you to get into your bed, so I can go downstairs and get in mine.”

He made another pfft notion. “My bed is better.”

Shaking her head, she nudged him. “Let’s go Don Juan, into bed with you.”

Rolling over, Tony crawled up toward the pillows as she circled the bed and helped him pull down the blankets. When he finally collapsed into the space, she dragged the blankets over him.

She took the time to refill the water and set it by the bed along with the aspirin. His eyes were closed, so hopefully he’d already drifted off, but before she could step away from the bed, he said, “Red?”

“I’m here,” she assured him.

“’m sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s okay,” she told him about whatever it was. “Next time you need to have a drink, call me, all right?”

He’d been very focused on not drinking. She’d seen it. So this bothered her a little, but she had plenty of nights she’d tried to drink herself into a stupor—but she also had a serum that prevented her from pickling her liver no matter how hard she tried.

“Sorry about the date,” Tony said again, his eyes were mostly closed.

“It’s okay…”

“’snot, I messed up. Shouldn’t have teased. Made Rogers mad.”

She sighed, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Tony? Are you actually having this conversation or are you really too drunk to remember?”

He peered up at her. “A little of both?”

“Okay, well then try to remember this, all right?” She met his gaze and waited for his little nod before she said, “Steve wasn’t mad at you. I don’t even think he was mad at me. You didn’t do anything wrong, if anything, I’m whelching on the bet and I shouldn’t…so I’m still going to buy you dinner one night, okay?”

“You don’t have to,” he said, with a wry grin. “I don’t want to make trouble.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re drinking because I canceled the date.”

“I’m not,” he said, and then sighed and rolled onto his back. Some of the drunk seemed to drift away from him, the playfulness giving way to the maudlin. “Bad stuff on the mission. Steve acting like I’m bad for you…”

She blinked at that.

“…guess I’m not such a good friend. Been trying. Trying to fix what I broke.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Steve getting hit with that stuff. He’s going to be all right, I mean it. I’ll make sure. Just—just needed it all to stop for a while.”

“Head feeling too full?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, then looked at her again. “Don’t be mad?”

“I’m not mad, Tony. Just worried about you. Worried about the team. Worried about Steve and James.” Worried that she’d really made the wrong call in coming back here. Maybe if she weren’t the distraction—maybe they’d have it all sorted it out. They'd been on the road to it.

“Gonna be fine,” he told her. “Gonna be great.” He started to push upward, but she nudged him back down with a hand flat on his chest. If he was too drunk to even dislodge her, he had no business being on his feet. “Okay, I guess I can lie here a bit. Don’t like sleeping much.”

“Yeah well, we always did have that in common,” she told him, and let him go as she stood. “But you need to sleep this off and get some rest. I’m gonna go do the same. James is on his way to the Compound to check on Steve. I’m sure he’ll send an update in a little while.”

“Wait…” Tony frowned, this time managing to sit half up. He peered at the clock, then at her. “He should have only been in isolation for a couple of hours.” The inebriated drawl evaporated. “Just until his blood work cleared.”

“Apparently it was anomalous, but he seems fine is what Sam told James. Dr. Cho is just being thorough, isn’t she Friday?”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff,” Friday announced. “Captain Rogers does not appear to be infected, nor is he exhibiting any of the signs observed in the bioorganic creatures we encountered at the base.”

Creatures.

Tony frowned. “But he’s still in isolation…get Dr. Cho on the line.”

“She’s in the hazardous materials laboratory as you requested, Boss and asked not to be disturbed. She’s trying to determine if the anomalies are representative of his exposure or just something to do with the serum.”

He scratched at his chin, then eyed her again. “Remind her that Captain Rogers isn’t a lab rat, and I’ll be reviewing all of her results.” There was nothing drunk in that tone, it was all business. “If I find out she’s just indulging her scientific curiosity, she’s not going to enjoy the reaction.”

“Maybe phrase it just a little more politely,” Natasha suggested. “But keep the rest of the tone intact.” If it were true, it wasn't Tony's reaction the doctor would need to worry about.

Sagging back against the pillows, he glared up at the ceiling. “I should have stayed there.”

“Stop it.”

“Red, I…”

“Tony,” she said his name softly. “Stop.”

He huffed out a breath.

“The whole world is not resting your shoulders. James is going to be there. Sam is there. Steve can take care of himself.” When he wasn’t being a bull-headed, obstinate idiot. “Go to sleep. Everything is going to be there in the morning.”

He nodded a little, then peered at her again. “You know you’re wet, right?”

She smiled, and shook her head. “Good night, Tony.”

She was almost to the door of his bedroom when he said, “Hey Red?”

“Yes?”

“I still want to do our date.”

Pausing, she glanced back at him.

“I mean it,” he said. “I want to just go have some fun with you. We can call it a playdate.”

“Playdates are for children,” she reminded him.

“When was the last time you got to be one?”

Never. And he knew that.

She smiled. “We’ll have to see, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, looking enormously satisfied. “That’s not a no.”

No, it wasn’t. And she didn’t try to examine it too closely. She hadn’t wanted to cancel it in the first place, but Steve and James had both looked at her like she’d committed a crime and considering they’d both seen her kill someone, it had given her pause.

Halfway across his living room, she paused to stare at the bar. It was a beautiful thing, and fully stocked. “Hey Friday?”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff?”

“Next time he’s out, and I’m in the Tower, let me know…I’m going to clean all of that out.”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff.”

“And Friday, if he starts drinking again, please tell me.” She couldn't make him stay sober, but that didn't mean he had to get drunk alone.

“As you wish, Ms. Romanoff.”

Nat collected her stuff, and returned to the elevator. This time Friday delivered her to Steve’s floor, and she hesitated. “Go on down to my floor, would you please, Friday?”

The AI didn’t comment. Her floor was still a mess. The wood had been torn up in places, the walls had holes in it. There were even naked bulbs swinging from where light fixtures had been. She made her way to the bedroom, and dug out some pajamas. Then she took a shower, and changed into them.

By the time she got the mattress situated so that she could use it—covering the deep gashes with a blanket that she secured with a fitted sheet—and settled in the middle of it, her phone rang.

Dragging her thumb across the screen, she said, “James?”

“He’s fine, doll. Crabby as hell, but fine. I’m looking right at him. The doc is supposed to be back in here within the hour.”

“Sam still with him?”

“Yeah,” James grumbled. “I had to step out into the decontamination area—don’t like the room he’s in. Reminds me of…”

“I know,” she said, soothing him automatically. “I hate pretty much anything that looks or smells like a medical room.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know he wants to talk to you, but Sam…”

“I know. It’s all right.” It had to be. They had no other choice at the moment. Not if they wanted to continue with keeping her a secret. “Just stay with him if it’s not too much for you.” Because maybe it wasn’t fair to ask it of him.

“It’ll be fine, doll,” he assured her, his tone lightening. “We’re all going to be fine…right?”

He just wanted her to forget the way he asked the question, the way he’d implied she was lying. She could, she supposed. She could be anyone, or anything. She could slip right into that mold, and smooth all of this over. Maybe she could even pretend until it were true. 

She’d said partners to Steve earlier. That was the pledge he’d made her, the pledge she’d given him back. They were off to a rocky start, but they’d had rockier. James kept assuring her, and maybe himself, they had time, that they had all the time in the world to figure this out. She’d already told him she didn’t know how to fix this, and she didn’t want to lie to him.

No matter how easy it would be.

“Natalia?” His voice was just the barest whisper.

“We have time,” she reminded him. “Remember?”

Then one of the burner phones began to ring.

“You have to go,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Text me if you have to leave? Please?”

She could do that. “Sure.”

Before he could say anything else, she hung up and reached for the Guerda phone. It was time to get to work.

For real.


	14. Jammed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve gets his test results, and some answers...

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Jammed**

**Steve**

 

 

Steve glared at the reinforced containment wall debating the level of force he needed to exert to crack that type of glass open. Sam sat in a chair on the other side just on the other side. He’d shown up about five minutes after Tony left, and set up shop. The retired airman was a good friend, maybe a better friend to Steve than Steve was to him at the moment. Because in reality, he just wanted the man to go away. But Sam wouldn’t leave him to brood.

After the first round of blood work came back anomalous—Dr. Cho’s words, not his—Sam ordered pizza, and got them drinks. Then shared Steve's portion through the decontamination drop box that allowed stuff to enter the containment, but nothing to exit. Dr. Cho came in, wearing hazmat gear, and drew another ten vials. It seemed excessive, but medical wasn’t his specialty. Sam’s frown, however, said he thought it was excessive too.

Though he wanted to get some sleep, he didn’t dare. The minute he was clear, he wanted out of the containment and on his way to the Tower—or Nat’s safe house. Wherever the hell she was—something he couldn’t find out because Sam didn’t leave him. He had found Steve’s phone, but it had been dead as a doornail so he put it on a charger.

When the second round of blood work came back with the same issues, Steve pressed Cho for an explanation.

“Helen, what does anomalous mean?”

The doctor’s delicate Korean features often belied the will of steel beneath the surface. She met his gaze directly, her expression pleasant if neutral. “It means exactly what I said—not quite within normal ranges. Your white blood cell count is through the roof. That would indicate you’re battling an infection, but I’m not finding any kind of infection. You’re also not exhibiting any symptoms of an infection.”

She marked something on her StarkPad, then held it up to the glass so he could see it. Sam stood right next to her, his expression fierce as he listened.

“These here,” Helen said, indicating cells on the screen. “These are your white blood cells and your red, the white is rapidly replicating, at a rate of one to every three hundred or so red blood cells.”

That didn’t so bad.

“Normal volume is red blood cells comprise about forty to forty-five percent of the blood’s mass, it’s why blood turns red. The average person has one white blood cell per six hundred red.”

That sounded worse.

“The increased production and presence doesn’t seem to have affected the number of red blood cells, but I can’t identify _why_ this is happening.”

“Could it be the serum?” Wasn’t everything the serum?

“I thought that might be related,” she said, irritation moved through her expression, there and gone again. Though whether she was irritated at his question or his results, he wasn’t sure. “That was why I did the second blood draw. The problem I ran into is all of your previous blood draws and analyses are marked classified. Friday was able to tell me that volume-ratio of red to white was within normal ranges _prior_ to this event.”

The irritation reappeared in her eyes.

“It would be easier to do this if I could look at the actual results myself, but without Mr. Stark’s explicit approval or a Red Level stamp—whatever that means—I’m not allowed.”

Red Level…Nat. Tony had given Nat explicit permission to release his files if she deemed it necessary. Something warm settled in his chest. Natasha would never reveal his data unless she deemed it an absolute necessity. “So I’m guessing my authorization won’t get you anywhere?” Even if they were his medical records…

“Unfortunately, no. Friday has proven less than cooperative on that front.” She sighed. “Captain Rogers…I don’t believe you are showing any negative symptoms from the exposure.” She motioned to his arm. “Even the burn has diminished, and will likely be gone by morning. But in all good conscience, the blood work doesn’t one hundred percent clear you to leave isolation.”

It was the apology in her tone that helped stave off his frustration. “What will?”

“I want to run another set of tests…check the status of the cells themselves, run some stains—and a genetic breakdown.” The last she winced as she said. “Which would technically run counter to Mr. Stark’s explicit wishes, but I don’t think he would argue with the necessity were he taking calls for me to explain.”

“Let Tony take it up with me, Dr. Cho.” He wasn’t keen on the idea of her taking more blood to try and chemically analyze. Experience told him she wasn’t going to get very far. Several doctors had, over the years since he emerged from the ice, attempted to analyze and break down what the serum had done and all had been left frustrated. It worked, they recognized the success of the formulation. Yet they couldn’t pinpoint the _why_ or even more precisely, the exact _how._

But aside from some rather violent frustration of being trapped _here_ when Natasha was somewhere else and he hadn’t even been able to talk to her after the way their morning had ended—he was _fine._

“Captain Rogers—Steve, I will do everything I can so we can get you out of here.”

“I appreciate it,” he told, and then waited while she shifted into hazmat gear. This time, she took near a full pint of his blood and he had to admit, it left him a little light headed. That was a lot of blood she’d pulled out of him over the last few hours. After she left, Sam leaned against the glass.

“Don’t get mad, man, but I texted Barnes.”

Steve frowned. Yes, they needed to know, but he wanted to be the one to tell them in the aftermath when everything was fine.

“He’s on his way.”

That was more problematic. “When did you send it, Sam?”

“’bout an hour ago after we got the message Helen was coming down here to talk to you. No way she was doing that if it were good news. Figured you’d want your boy to know...and since he wasn’t here, he either didn’t know or he was an ass.”

“Sam…” Steve sighed. “Why are you so hard on Bucky? You’re not an ass.”

Arms folded, the airman studied him. Dressed in all gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, he looked very much as he had the day Steve met him after lapping him several times on a run. “You want me to go chronologically or alphabetically?”

“Why don’t we just go with truthfully?” Because honestly, he needed Sam to not keep poking at Buck and then Buck could relax his own animosity.

“Guy tried to shoot Natasha in the backseat of my car, he then nearly shot you and me both in the head—and would have if Natasha hadn’t made both of us move. Then he tore out the steering wheel.” Sam ticked them off on his fingers. “Blew you off the bridge, and then went after Nat like she was the hottest ticket in town, and he couldn’t wait to punch holes in her—and oh wait, he did. He tore off my wing, and he pumped you full of lead—after he beat the ever loving snot out of you.”

The steady beat of his voice climbed a fraction as he made his list. “Then there’s the two years— _two years_ —we spent looking for him. Watching you tear yourself apart man, just to find a guy who didn’t want to be found. But hey, now we got him and we’re all supposed to be cool and let bygones be bygones.”

Well, at least he wasn’t down on Natasha at the moment. That was progress. “It happened Sam, most of it wasn’t his fault.”

“It was still him.”

Yeah, he was a little sick of that particular argument. He heard it from Nat, he heard it from Bucky and the thing was… “Sam, when you shot people in the Air Force, did you do it because you liked it? Did you think about the families those men left behind? Did you think about the friends who were hurt when they were gone? Did you decide to kill them, or hurt them? Was that all you?”

Sam blinked. “Hey…”

“Answer me,” he told him in a tone he’d learned from General Phillips. It was an order, pure and simple.

“I don’t like killing.”

“So?” He raised his eyebrows, daring Sam to finish the thought. “Did that stop you from doing it? Did it make you hesitate? Did it ever make you say _no_?”

“No,” Sam admitted. “I wanted to…after Riley, after all those nights on the hard ground, after not being able to get their faces out of my head—I wanted to.”

“So why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just tell them to suck it and go home?” He knew the answer. Steve damn well knew Sam knew he was aware of the answer. But that whole _it was still him_ argument pissed him off.

“You know why—I was an airman, a pararescue—my job was to be there. To help the ones I could help, and to stay alive to help more.”

“So, you killed people. You wrecked lives. But you were following orders.” Then he leaned forward, fierce and focused. “But _it was still you._ ”

Sam blew out a breath.

“You could still have walked away. You might have ended up court martialed, or in jail. But realize Bucky couldn’t—he literally couldn’t. So it didn’t matter how many people they sent him to kill, how much blood they bathed him in….” How much blood they bathed both of them in. “He was tortured.” So was she. “He was modified against his will.” Just like her. “He was trapped.” And held. “Hostage.” Shackled. “A prisoner of war.” A prisoner of her birth. “And no one— _no one_ gave him a choice. Until Bucky managed to escape after Hydra fell alongside SHIELD, but he still didn't even know who he was.” Until she clawed her way up, following a path she barely understood.

Still didn’t fully understand.

Looking down, Sam’s shoulders fell. “Steve…”

“I don’t need you to be his best friend, Sam. I got that covered,” Steve told him, exhausted and wishing like hell, he could just see Natasha. Just look at her. Just _know_ she was okay. That Sam was someone they could tell, so he would bring Steve a phone to call her. But Sam wasn’t there yet, and Steve wouldn’t jeopardize him. He’d already nearly cost him his freedom once and that was when Sam was willing to follow him blindly.

When Sam finally met his gaze again, there was an apology in those eyes.

“What I need is for you give him the space to be, and stop pushing him. Stop trying to corner him. Because I want him to push back, to know he can, and that he has the right.” Don’t be a bully Sam—even a bully with good intentions. “Can you do that?”

“Yeah, Cap. I can do that.” He ran a hand over his face before crossing his arms. “I worry about you.”

“I’m good Sam…all evidence of my current location to the contrary. I’m good.”

With a shake of his head, Sam said, “Even with Stark?”

“Tony and I made our peace.” Or they had. “Tony’s the reason you’re back. He’s the reason Clint has a chance to be with his family, and that Lang got to go home.”

“And Wanda?”

“He’s working on that. Same way he did for me. But Wanda doesn’t want it, not yet.” Maybe a little more transparency would be a good thing. Sam’s surprise spoke volumes for his awareness of the current situation. “I’ve talked to Wanda, she’s doing okay.”

He’d like her to come back, too. She was a kid, and they were her family. For most of them, they were the only family some had. The door on the far side opened, and Bucky stepped through. Steve recognized him by silhouette alone. The blue-violet lighting gave him the appearance of a living shadow.

“Hey Buck.”

His best friend crossed the distance to eye him. The sweep of his assessing gaze cool, and almost impersonally clinical before he focused on Steve’s face. Then he just grunted. “What the hell, Punk?”

“So far, so good,” Sam told him. “But we’re waiting on more blood work.”

“Yeah? You came back all right?” Bucky spared Sam a look.

“Yeah well, we can’t all be Captain America.”

For a moment the two men shared a look that was equal parts exasperation, and irritation before they focused on him again. “No,” Bucky said. “We can’t.”

Steve wanted to ask him where Natasha was. But the rivulets of water running down Bucky’s face made him frown. “You’re soaking wet.”

“Cause it’s raining smart guy, I brought your bike up from where you had to ditch it when they grabbed you in the quinjet.” Someone had to have let him know, Steve hadn’t had time. “Made sure everything got back to the Tower okay.”

Nat was safely back at the Tower.

“Thanks,” Steve told him. “Everything good?”

Bucky’s shrug was less than helpful. “Could be better. Probably won’t hurt if we get out of here sooner rather than later.”

She was still pissed at them—or at least as close to pissed as she could get. Raising his eyebrows, he spread his hands. “Stuck ‘til Cho gives me the all clear.”

“You look fine,” Bucky told him succinctly. Arms crossed and posture rigid, he studied Steve as if it would tell him what was wrong. “How do you feel?”

“Tired and sick of this place.” He wanted to see Natasha. “It’s been a long damn day, and not one filled with great choices.” On any level.

“I get that,” Bucky acceded. He didn’t drag over a chair to join them. In fact, his pacing began to aggravate Sam as they waited for Helen. Steve knew Sam was trying to be supportive, and at least he wasn’t picking at Bucky, but he also didn’t leave them alone. So the conversation consisted of a lot of double meaning, and whether the cold pizza was any good.

If the dripping off his coat and hair bothered him, Bucky didn’t complain. After about twenty-five minutes, he motioned to the doors. “Gonna take a walk.” But touched two fingers to his ear and mimed a phone with his fingers when Sam wasn’t looking. He was gonna call Natasha.

A thousand different things he wanted to say to her went through his mind, but he had to settle for, “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

The next hour passed with agonizing slowness. Bucky returned from his call a little more agitated, though the only way Steve recognized it was in the silence and thousand yard stare. Neither of them wanted to be here, but Bucky at least had a choice.

“Thanks Buck,” he said to him quietly when Sam gave them a breather to answer a call of his own.

“Not my first time sitting with you through a medical emergency,” Bucky said, a wry twist to his lips. “But you look a damn sight healthier this time.”

“Wish the doc would come back and say that. I just want to go…” He started to say home and hesitated. The Tower wasn’t home, not really and yet… “…home.”

“Stevie?” Bucky checked on Sam’s distance, then glanced at him.

Not liking the hesitation in his tone, he straightened. “Yeah?”

“Those jobs we were talking about?”

Natasha’s jobs. Steve nodded. “What about them?”

“One of them called, it’s probably already filled—or being filled.” Worry flickered in his eyes.

That meant Natasha wasn’t at the Tower. She was out there. Alone.

Again.

“Which one?” They’d been splitting up the tasks, but if she had to move on it, he couldn’t expect her to wait for him. Not when she’d made it clear _why_ she needed the work. He didn’t think he could adore her more, and then she told him about some of the jobs she’d done, opened up about that history and where she directed the money.

“The kid…” was all he managed before Sam hung up and headed back in their direction. It was enough. The kidnapped child. No way Natasha would wait on that.

Dropping to sit on the bed, Steve leaned against the wall. “Okay. Let me know if you hear about the others?”

Bucky nodded.

“Others?” Sam asked.

“Been looking at apartments,” Bucky lied easily, not even a flicker of his eyelash to betray the change in topics. “Lost out on one. Still waiting to hear if we qualify for the others.”

Not that it was entirely a lie. Steve had been looking at places, and maybe he needed to shift that search into neutral. Tony had a point, the Tower was a lot bigger than any place he and Bucky could afford.

 _You know what Stevie,_ he told himself. _Maybe let’s just focus on the dating before we rush her to moving in._ A part of him wanted it settled though. He wanted Natasha securely tied to he and Buck, settled in a life they could have, one they could build on. He wanted a safe space for the pair of them.

But she’d never had a normal life, and Bucky seemed almost too many years removed from his. It hadn’t been as long for Steve. A few years—Erskine’s formula, the war, and finally waking from the ice—since he’d been that kid in Brooklyn. The one who had to say bye to his best friend when he’d been left behind.

He knew what that felt like, and while he’d gotten lucky, neither Bucky nor Natasha could say the same thing.

They deserved every opportunity, but he wasn’t sure either knew how to ask for it or that they had the right to want it.

So—take it slow. Make a plan. Ease them into it. Make it easier, not harder.

Course, what the hell did Steve know about long-term relationships of any kind? He’d gotten farther with Natasha than he ever had with Peggy, and he still felt like was on unstable ground.

Bucky came and went. He’d linger until his agitation got to be too much, and then he’d slip outside. Probably getting a smoke and calming down before he returned. Sam watched him with a thoughtful look, but didn’t comment other than to offer to play cards.

They both turned him down.

It was almost five in the morning when Helen returned, _hours_ longer than she’d taken with either of the other tests. She switched the lights from the blue-violet to normal that had all three of them squinting at her.

“My apologies, Captain, but I wanted to be absolutely sure.” She had a tablet in her hand. “This,” she said as she queued up an image and showed it to him. “This is the blood work I showed you earlier, your white cell count is still high, but now I know why.”

Bucky focused on her so fiercely that Helen actually stuttered when she glanced at him. “Go on,” he ordered when she hesitated.

“Sorry,” she said then swallowed before hurrying onward. “The agent you were exposed to, we don’t know a lot about it beyond the fact it’s bioorganic. Tony indicated it was self-replicating when not in its inert form.”

The stuff on those poor people—or what was left of those poor people—had definitely _not_ been inert.

Sam had his arms wrapped on himself tight, his face a mask of concern. “This stuff wasn’t inert,” he declared echoing Steve’s thought.

“No, and you were definitely exposed, but the serum is not only defeating it, it’s refusing to allow it a foothold of any kind.” She flipped the screen to another close up image. “These white blood cells have utterly encapsulated the self-replicating matter, and contained it. That’s why you have so many white blood cells.”

Steve scratched at his beard. “So I’m clear? Not a threat to anyone?”

“I want to do additional blood work, to make sure your count comes down and the infection is indeed eradicated. But at the moment, I can’t even find trace amounts of the material. If I hadn’t been watching the separation of the white blood cells, I wouldn’t have detected it this time.” Excitement quivered in her voice. “The serum’s work is truly remarkable, and if I can just understand it more—maybe I can replicate—”

“No,” Steve said in the same breath as Bucky. While Steve kept his voice even, there was an edge of hostility in Buck’s voice. “Sorry, Helen. No. We’re not going to experiment with the serum or my cells. If it’s working, great. It means I can handle exposure to this stuff and that means we can work on containing it.”

But no more lab rats. No letting anyone do with his blood what they’d been attempting to do with Natasha’s. Though by all accounts, no one had been able to divide the serum from his DNA, and they hadn’t been able to get it to work with anyone else either.

What he wanted was out of this chamber. “Am I clear?”

She frowned, chewing on her lip. “Captain…”

“Helen.” He didn’t glare at her, she was getting enough of that from Bucky. Maybe her own self-preservation instincts kicked in, because she shot him more than one nervous glance. “Am I threat to anyone?”

“I don’t believe so, no,” she admitted. “But for your sake, we do need to monitor your counts.”

“I can have Friday do that,” he told her, and while he might apologize normally, there was something a little too excited in her voice for him to feel ultimately comfortable.

“I’m sure Mr. Stark’s AI is qualified, but I’m the genetics expert…” she began to argue, and it only firmed Steve’s resolve. He met Bucky’s glance over her head, and shook his head. Bucky nodded, and plucked the tablet from her hand. “Wait, what are you…”

Bucky snapped the whole thing in half with a crush of glass and crunch of metal.

“Dude,” Sam said as he gaped.

“Thanks Buck.” Steve pointed to the controls. “Access is there.”

“Steve, she said they wanted to keep an eye on it…” Sam cast him a worried look.

“And I can do that—back at the Tower, I can give Friday blood samples to check. Isn’t that right, Friday?”

Unsurprisingly, the AI responded promptly and had likely been monitoring the whole time. “Of course, Captain Rogers. I have also initiated the encryption and security on all test results.”

Helen’s expression crumpled. “If you insist…”

“He does,” Bucky said flatly, then he hit the button releasing the lockdown and the door to the isolation chamber opened with a hiss. Steve didn’t rush out, but he did suck in a deeper breath. The narrow eyed look he gave Helen silenced any other objections she might have had. “C’mon, Stevie. We got a long ride.”

“Hey, it’s late and you’re both tired,” Sam offered as they moved to head for the exit. Bucky hadn’t left the ruined tablet, instead, he’d carried the shattered device with him. “Just crash here. Steve’s still got a room and there’s plenty of space.”

Buck didn’t slow down, but Steve had to. Sam had stayed all night, he deserved something of an explanation. “Bucky does better at the Tower—and right now so do I.” Because he couldn’t put this all on Bucky. His best friend would do better wherever Natasha was and so would Steve quite frankly. But she couldn’t come to the Compound. There were literally too many people from the contractors to the scientists to the professionals who worked for the Avengers Initiative—ostensibly via Stark Industries payroll. They couldn’t know about Nat.

They were keeping Rhodey, Sam, and Vision in that category as well. It was both to shield her and them. The fewer people who knew, the fewer who could betray her. Of course, Tony had added Peter Parker to that list.

 _And Nat was right to accept it._ Steve could see that, especially after the few minutes of the training he’d seen.

“Sorry man, I don’t get that,” Sam told him. “I understand you need some time to yourself, but you can get that here.”

What he needed was an answer that resonated as the truth, a deeper truth than just “comfortable.” “Sam…” He glanced over his shoulder to where Bucky stood by the decon chamber for the exit. “Give us a minute, Buck?”

His best friend nodded. “I’ll be with the bike.” Then he was outside. It looked like it might still be raining.

Facing Sam, he met his gaze, “I’m not ready to be back at the Compound.”

“All right,” Sam said slowly. “This have anything to do with…?” He was reaching.

“Natasha’s not here,” he told him bluntly, because it was the truth. “When we were all here before, she was my second, and we were training the team. She was my right hand, and I’m not ready to face life here in her absence. That doesn’t mean I’m not part of the team, doesn’t mean I won’t come train. Just don’t…not ready to be here.”

Understanding filled Sam’s eyes. “You never said…”

“Didn’t think I had to,” Steve admitted. “It’s been a long few months.”

“Yeah,” Sam sighed. “You hear from her?”

Now he had to lie. “Not in a while.” Not since he left for the mission. The best lies were grounded in truth.

“You know folks are pretty much labeling her public enemy number one.”

“I’m old, not dead. I can read and hear the news just fine. And they’re wrong about her…”

“Steve—I read those reports about her and Ross.” Sam winced. “And I know you don’t believe everything they say on the news, hell I don’t. But between her history and…”

“She saved your life, Sam. More than once.” Steve held his gaze. “She’s saved my life countless times. She saved the damn planet. I think her history pretty much pales against that, don’t you?”

“Well yeah, but…”

“No buts.” He might not be able to tell Sam the truth, but he couldn’t let him hang onto this bad belief in her. “She was your friend,” he reminded him. “She was right there with us when SHIELD went down.” She’d been with him every step of the way. “I wouldn’t have made it without her—or you.”

“I hear you.” He bowed his head. “Just think…where the hell is she? She fell off the map after Germany.”

“I didn’t leave her much choice,” he reminded him. “She let me and Buck go. She didn’t have to, but she did. And then T’Challa turned her in.”

“But she was never at the Raft.” Not that he sounded complaining now, but more genuinely concerned. “They never caught her—or at least they didn’t ‘til the Ross thing.”

“Yeah well…the Ross thing got him off of all of us, and bought us our pardons.” She’d traded her safety and her pain for that. “So I think we keep giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

“We gonna start looking for her?”

“No,” he said slowly and shook his head. “She’ll find us when she’s ready.”

“All right,” Sam agreed, then offered him his hand. “And for what it’s worth—I’ll take a step back on Barnes. I think he still needs someone to push him a little. Get him out of his head and integrate more. Think it would be better for everyone—maybe help pull this ‘team’ back together.”

Cause they weren’t a team yet. He didn’t have to say that aloud.

“Thanks Sam, just give him time. He’s earned it.”

“All right,” Sam agreed, holding his hands up as he backed off a step. Whether to symbolize he’d go along with it, or to just relinquish the argument—Steve didn’t know. “We’ll do it your way.”

It was definitely still raining when he got outside, and the wind didn’t do much for improving his mood. He reclaimed the SHIELD and his phone from decontamination on his way to his quarters for a jacket and boots. After he climbed on the bike and let Bucky drive. He was too restless otherwise. They could have left it, and borrowed a car but Steve wanted his bike at the Tower. Maybe he wanted the lashing rain on the drive.

Or maybe, he was hoping Natasha would be there when they arrived. A hope Friday dashed the moment they stepped on the elevator.

“No, Captain Rogers. Ms. Romanoff left several hours ago and has not returned yet.”

Once they were back, Bucky disappeared to shower and Steve took a minute to do the same. After, he checked her room, even though he knew she was gone. The view showed the morning skies were as dark and dreary as the night had been. No sunrise.

“Huh.”

“What?” Bucky asked from behind him. Steve glanced back. His best friend had a towel around his neck, and he’d changed into sweat pants and a tank top. He’d also taken the time to shave.

“No sunrise.”

She liked sunrises. Said they told her she survived to another day. But there was no sunrise today.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Bucky suggested. “You going to sleep?”

“Haven’t decided,” Steve admitted. He was tired, but he wasn’t sure he could rest. “I thought I’d go over those files she has for the jobs. Do some research. I’d planned to talk to Tony about some things, but Friday said he’s asleep and unavailable.” He owed Tony an apology.

He’d had time to think after the billionaire walked out. Tony had been right, Steve had been reacting, not thinking. While it didn’t alleviate his responsibility for the choices he’d made—he owed him an apology for the implication.

He owed more to Nat, but he’d have to wait to pay that debt.

“I sent her a message,” he told Bucky, waving his lightly. “No response. Don’t even think she’s read it yet.”

“She might not answer on the job. Might not be safe.” It was a reasonable response.

“Fair.” Pulling himself away from the window, he glanced around her room. “You said she brought the files back with her, right?”

“Yeah, we stopped to get them after she was done with Parker…”

“How did that go?” Steve checked the night stands, and the top drawer. Then headed into the living room and kitchen.

“Kid did okay. She shocked him.” Bucky chuckled. “With her widow’s bite and the fact she did it.”

Steve shook his head. “I almost feel bad for the kid.” Where were the files?

“I don’t,” Bucky drawled as he followed him without elaborating on why he didn't. But like Steve, he seemed puzzled by the lack of the folders.

He held off asking why on that last statement. “Hey Friday, did Natasha take some folders with her when she went?” The AI might not know. Nat didn’t really care for being monitored when she was in the Tower.

“My apologies. I am unaware if she did or not, Captain Rogers.”

“That’s fine…did she maybe go to the common room or something before she headed out?” She’d been in the training room and gym the day before—or the day before that. Time was starting to bleed together.

“No, sir. After she returned to the Tower, she went to her floor for approximately one hour and fifty-seven minutes prior to departing.”

He paused. Her floor.

Across the room, Bucky frowned at him. “She was on her floor the other day, too. I think.” When he and Steve had both been gone from the Tower for hours.

Nat had a right to her privacy. The floor was hers, after all. Steve had spent time there on and off, when they’d lived at the Tower regularly. Though most often, the team hung out in the training rooms or common floor. Nat and he had shared a movie two or three nights a week, alternating whose floor they used.

Tony said it had thoroughly searched and torn apart by the government. Checking his phone to make sure he had it on him, he headed for the elevator. “Friday, take me to Nat’s floor, please.”

Bucky slid through the doors before they could close. “We are spying on Natalia?”

“No,” Steve answered after a moment, and before the doors opened to let them out onto a floor that had a similar layout to his, only instead of extra rooms, it had more training space and had a dance studio. The level of destruction from the torn up floorboards to the holes in the walls themselves set a match to his temper.

There were boxes of what few things she’d kept here thrown together, some had spilled out their contents as if carelessly dropped. Even the mirrors in the dance studio had been broken.

“This wasn’t a search,” Bucky said slowly as he made his way through it.

“No, it was an attack.” Steve shook his head. Tony had told them, but Steve should have come to take a look at it sooner. “A straight up assault on her.”

“Ross is still alive.” The quiet observation suggested that really didn’t need to be the case.

“You don’t have to do that anymore,” he reminded him. “Even if I wouldn’t be adverse to helping you with that one.” Some people—some people were just rotten to the core. Thaddeus Ross might have started out an okay guy, but he went wrong somewhere along the way and he wasn’t any better than Schmidt. Zola. Petrovitch.

“Some people just need killing,” Bucky told him with a shrug, that was all him even if there was an echo of the Winter Soldier in there. “He even looks in her direction again…”

“I’ll be right next to you,” he told him. “Hand to God.”

They shared a nod, then glanced around at the destruction.

“So what are we down here for?” Bucky asked. “If we’re not spying?”

“The files. I wanted to see if I could help her with the research. Get a feel for what she’s up against—what she was letting us help with.”

“Was?”

“Well, pal, I had to leave after our epic cock-up of accusing her of lying to us…of me pointing out she hadn’t told us about Tony or any date. Then I had to go after I hurt her. So yeah…was.” Not that he’d blame her if she retreated.

“She’s not running away from us,” Bucky reminded him. “Or at least…she wasn’t.” Her absence made that a little bit of a lie, but only because she wasn’t there. Her reason for being gone was valid. “She was worried about you.”

“I know,” he sighed, making his way around the room. Her sofa had been gutted, all the cushions ripped open and their stuffing spilled out. He’d like the dark green piece of furniture, it had been oversized and he could actually stretch out on it. The chairs in her little kitchen were pretty much kindling—they’d even pulled apart her coffee maker.

All of the art pieces that had hung on the walls were gone. Some had gone to the Compound, but not all of them. He moved away from the dance studio, he’d only ever seen it once when they lived there. It was a part of her life she’d kept private, and the door had been open when he stopped by one day.

Bucky looked into the room, his expression unreadable before he followed him. He had both of his hands stuffed into his pockets as though determined not to touch anything.

Her bedroom door was open, and like everywhere else, it was in shambles. The bed had been put back together, and there was a pajama top and bottoms sitting discarded next to the folders he’d been looking for.

The image struck him.

Natasha had come here instead of their floor after she got back to the Tower. She’d come back to this wreckage rather than the room she’d claimed for herself on his floor.

Here.

Away from them.

Telling himself to not read too much into it wasn’t working. Clothing lay in a tangled stack next to the closet, and the interior had also been gutted, but there was a space open in the back of the shoe closet, and he glanced inside. The wall panel had been moved and there was a naked, empty cubby behind it.

A go bag, he’d bet.

“She used the shower down here,” Bucky said quietly. “The towels are still damp.”

“She needed some time,” he said. “We owe it to her.” Maybe if he said it enough, it would dislodge the boulder settling on his heart. After picking the folders up from the bed, he checked his phone. He’d made a point of collecting it before they left the Compound.

No messages from her.

At least not since he’d checked it fifteen minutes earlier.

The elevator dinged, and he pivoted and was already in the living room before he’d realized he’d moved. The doors opened to reveal a haggard Tony with deep shadows under his eyes and disheveled hair. He looked like he’d rolled out of bed and come straight down.

“Good,” Tony said as he peered at him. “Cho cleared you?”

“She said the serum was taking it out, but she couldn’t tell exactly how it was, so I’m fine. We still lack answers.” To put it succinctly. “Tony…”

“Take it down a notch, Cap. Marching band is still using my head for bongo drums.” He glared around her floor. “I have a crew coming in to get this fixed and put to rights. Where’s Red?”

“She’s gone,” Bucky answered, and Tony paled further.

“She had a job to do,” Steve explained. “She’ll be back.”

“A job? Friday—where is she?” Tony looked torn between pissed and hung over. Definitely smelled closer to a hangover.

“Ms. Romanoff ordered me to refrain from tracking her unless an emergency came up or she activated it.” Friday sounded apologetic.

“And who said she could do that?” Belligerent, Tony winced at the comment.

“You did,” Steve reminded him and Tony gave him a dirty look.

“Bad idea on my part,” he muttered, but it wasn’t and he didn’t even look like he believed it. “Crap, I shouldn’t have had that drink last night. Maybe I could have talked her out of this.”

“Doubtful. And not because it’s you,” Steve told him, clarifying before he triggered Tony's earlier ire by misspeaking. “Natasha already made up her mind. The best we can do….” The only thing they could do. “…is support her.”

And hope like hell she called soon.

“I’m gonna go over your test results, and have about a gallon of coffee,” Tony announced before heading for the elevator.

“Tony…” Steve took two steps after him. “About yesterday…”

“It’s forgotten Cap. We both said some shit. Work in progress right?”

He didn’t want to forget it. He wanted to—to figure out a better way to handle it. Before he could say anything, Friday interrupted, “Sorry Boss, General Ryker and Secretary Manelli are on a conference call and would like the three of you to join them.”

Bucky groaned, and Tony leaned against the open elevator door, shaking his head.

“Definitely should not have had that drink,” he muttered. “Baby Girl, ask them to give us ten minutes if that’s possible?” Then he looked at the pair of them blearily. “You two better come up to the penthouse. Coffee, and pardon looks like the breakfast of the day.”

“It might not be a pardon…” Bucky frowned at him.

“If they were turning you down, Terminator, they’d have sent the MPs to detain you, not invited us to a phone call. Come on…we could all use some good news.” Then once they were in the elevator going up, Tony eyed Steve. “Did Cho get anything out of the results on whatever that stuff was?”

“No,” Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck. He still felt fine, tired, but fine.

Well, as fine as he could feel wondering where exactly Natasha’s job had taken her and if she was all right.

“Great. We haven’t seen the last of that stuff yet…” The doors opened to the penthouse, and Tony led the way out. “Let’s get Barnes cleared, then we can tackle the next problem.”

And likely the one after that.

Because lately, there was always a one after that.

Steve glanced at his phone.

No messages.

He had to trust her to take care of her. Clint said he didn’t—and he was probably right.

It was time for Steve to learn.

But when he glanced up, he found Bucky checking his phone, too. He gave Steve a slight head shake. He hadn’t heard from her yet, either.

Based on her orders to Friday, she probably—he halted the thought right there. Her orders to Friday were just that. Don’t track her unless it was an emergency or she asked for the assist. She had work to do and it was dangerous enough she probably didn’t want any of them dropping into the middle of it and making a mess.

He could respect it. He _had_ too. The folders under his arm were getting heavier. He also had to trust that she still wanted their help.

Right at the ten-minute mark, Tony sat in a chair in his sunken living room with a cup of coffee in hand, leaving the sofa to Steve and Bucky. Despite his bedraggled appearance and tired eyes, his voice was all professional and full of cheer when Friday connected the call, “Good morning Mr. Secretary, General…thanks for reaching out. Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers are also on the call with us.”

“Good morning,” Secretary Manelli greeted them. “We have good news for you…”

And just like that, one of the larger boulders that had been pressing down on Steve since they’d returned was gone.

Buck was getting his pardon.

Next, they got Natasha hers.


	15. Salvage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This might be the start of a beautiful friendship...

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Salvage**

**Natasha**

 

 

Twenty-four hours after leaving the Tower, Nina Reddington made her way down the gangway of the flight from Paris to Casablanca. Dressed in a simple black pantsuit with a jacket over her arm and pulling single carryon case, she added a simple white scarf to wrap around her short, bobbed deep brown hair. She has a pair of sunglasses tucked into her hand, a careless afterthought she would have to slip into her purse when she arrived at customs.

The flight was only half full, mostly businessmen and a few tourists returning from Paris on the last flight to leave the City of Lights for the day, and landing in the North African city first thing in the morning. The sun would be rising within the hour. The flight would have been faster, save they’d had a brief stopover in Portugal before continuing on their way.

She queued up into the line and waited patiently for her turn. A woman in a dark scarf greeted her in French, and Nina answered her flawlessly as she extended her French passport.

“Your purpose in visiting Casablanca, Mademoiselle Reddington?”

“Shopping,” Nina answered with a smile. “It’s been a couple of years since my last visit, and I wanted to get away from work and just relax for the weekend.”

A long weekend in Casablanca for a Parisian was not at all unheard of. The woman smiled, and placed a stamp in the passport, similar to the one documenting her visit just two years earlier. “You should be sure to check out Quartier Habous, they have a little bit of everything there.”

“Oh, I think I was there last time—gorgeous open air market and the loveliest tea house near the courtyard fountains.”

The customs agent smiled, her whole face relaxing as her eyes lit up. “If you like that tea house, go to the west end of the bazaar, a new one opened over the summer and they make the most delicious rose hips tea.”

Nina nodded. “The west side? Near the silk vendors or the perfumery?”

“Silk vendors. A dressmaker from Tunis and her family have opened a space near it, truly stunning work if you can afford it.” The last she delivered almost confidentially, as if sharing a true secret.

“Then I must definitely discover the wonders of these new additions! Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, have a lovely stay.” Then she was waving her through, and Nina made her way toward the doors to the outside. The air was warm, but the breeze was cool and carried hints of the ocean and yet the promise of the desert. There were few places in the world like Casablanca. The film version had been made in Los Angeles, on a lot, yet she couldn’t help but think of it as she made her way to the cab stand. She slipped on her jacket for modesty, and waited for the first cab to pull up.

Easing inside, she gave the driver an address on the opposite side of town from the bazaar. It was a quiet set of terraced apartments. The driver whisked through the early morning traffic easily and had her to the address in short order. She paid him in local currency, much to his delight, and he wished her well and she him. Then he hurried away. Dawn approached and the bells had already begun to ring, announcing the first salah of the day. She made her way to the top floor, and then opened the apartment with a carefully applied amount of pressure and a couple of small tools. The interior was clean, quiet, and understated. A table in the corner near the windows overlooking the street. A comfortable stack of pillows where a sofa might usually sit, and a stack of two mattresses in the corner of the bedroom.

A thin layer of dust covered everything, and the rooms definitely needed airing. She slipped off her shoes, jacket, and scarf. The cleaning supplies were stowed in the kitchen. It took her thirty minutes to wipe everything down, do a quick inventory, the remove the cover from the vent tucked behind the bed.

Extra cash, more IDs—some she’d need to just burn because they were useless, a pair of guns, and four knives. Something rattled in the back and she had to dig to pull it out, and then paused when she dislodged something gold and heavy—awkward as hell heavy—that had wedged in there. The brick of gold was the last thing she expected to see.

Why the hell was there a gold bar in the vent safe?

The top had a pressing of the weight, and a serial number. But she studied the bar for a moment and then shook her head before wedging the damn thing back in there. “Okay, Barton. If this is your idea of saving for a rainy day, we need to talk about portability.”

The sunrise streaked the sky reds, pinks, and oranges. It was stunning. Casablanca sat on the Atlantic coast, but the desert was just beyond the city. It was this perfect little oasis and the sunrise seemed to be welcoming her as much as the customs agent had.

It was another day.

She’d made it.

Even if it was the middle of night at home.

Home.

She went to her bag and pulled out her phones. She’d turned hers off for the duration of the trip, only activating the Guerda phone in case the kidnappers reached out again. Their first call had only been to inform her she needed to be at a café in Casablanca at lunchtime today, alone, and ready to discuss terms.

If she were late, Guerda would never see his son again. She agreed to the terms politely. As a negotiator, she had to maintain a civil dialogue until the arrangements were finalized and she had Mateo Guerda safely in hand. She stared at her phone and debated switching it on. She was on a job, and she needed her head in the game here, not New York.

But when she left, Steve had still been in isolation.

What if he were worse?

She glanced at her bracelet. No, if Steve were worse, Tony would have turned her phone on already. He or Friday or both. She’d told Friday to not track her unless there was an emergency. Steve’s health worsening would be an emergency.

Slipping the phone back into the bag, she checked the Guerda phone. It was also without messages, and she had another four hours before she needed to head to the café. She took the time to clean the guns, and check their magazines. Then she went over her blades. It had been more than a year—maybe two—since she’d been in this safe house. Clint had apparently been here since then. She would have noticed the gold bar if it had been there before.

Weapons check took her less than an hour, and that was disassembling and cleaning the guns thoroughly. She returned all the weapons save for two knives. After, she washed up in the kitchen and made herself a cup of instant coffee. The small tin in the back was ancient, but instant coffee would survive the apocalypse. She wasn’t too worried about flavor, just substance.

She sipped the coffee while she watched the neighborhood around her come to life. Mothers taking their children out to markets or perhaps schools. Men and women shuttling off to jobs. Grandmothers out for a stroll. Grandfathers moving out to play chess or checkers or other games with their compatriots on sunny patios.

This part of Casablanca was homey, and teeming with families both native and foreign. She didn’t stand out here, especially not in a brown wig and dark brown contacts. Her red hair was far too noticeable in Morocco and even with a scarf, some of the men took it as a red flag to speak to her rudely or come onto her.

Red heads were definitely foreign, and she’d had to disabuse a few who thought it was challenging…

_It wasn’t that late when she’d left the club, but she had what she went there for—Clint would probably yell at her when she got back to the hotel. She’d slipped out while he napped. He’d been against the plan to infiltrate the club in the first place, but she knew places like that. Places where women faded into the background no matter how beautiful. They were objects to be admired or coveted or played with—the men would talk around them for hours._

_She had everything on the cells, their targets, and their planned movements. It was amazing how much they discussed while they enjoyed their pipes, the music, and good drink. The fact she’d only had to pour their libations and sit quietly on her knees for four hours had left her feet a little numb, but she’d done a lot worse for a lot less._

_Making her way along the street, she enjoyed the beauty of the city. Some people described it as western decadence, but she found as much of the old world as the new and it was—_

_Her ears rang as she sat up slowly, the world had gone strangely quiet except for this long, high pitched humming noise. Head swaying, she glanced at the ground, and the glass scattered around her. Smoke and metal seemed to coat her tongue, and the smell of burnt flesh clung to her nose. Why was there so much glass? There was heat too, and she was on the ground._

_Glass bit into her palm when she tried to push herself up. Her face was wet. People ran past, and she tried to focus on them with her blurred vision. The world was too quiet—but hazy, just a step out of focus. She made it to her feet, but one of her shoes was gone. The skirt she’d been wearing was torn. The air brushed against her bare knee._

_Where was her shoe?_

_She turned, in a slow circle. Swift movement in her periphery made her stagger, her arms going up to block even if her balance was off. It made her fall back a step, and glass shards dug into her foot. The pain grounded her and then Clint was there, his face swimming into her vision and he had a hold of her arms._

_Blinking slowly, it took her a moment to realize his lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear anything,_

_“What?” Even her own words sounded faint, lost to the high-pitched whine punching through her head._

_His frown was fierce, and he had a tight grip on her arms, then he had her up, carrying her. What the hell was he doing? She tried to struggle to get free, but her limbs weren’t cooperating. It was like her muscles weren’t getting the right messages._

_With a sharp squeeze, he glared at her and she blinked. She put a hand to her face, and winced. There was glass in her palm. A huge chunk of it just staring back at her. What—the thought stuttered as Clint made his way past flashing lights, and more people and she could see past his shoulder to where they’d come from. There were several cars on fire, they’d exploded—and around them were bodies._

_Everywhere._

_Pieces of them._

_Car bombs._

_Somewhere in there, she’d passed out._

_When she woke again, Clint was cleaning her feet, and her ears were still ringing, but she could hear him swearing._

_“…just leave while I’m sleeping, don’t leave a note. No, it’s fine, Clint. I run ops all the time, I’m not a child. I can do this in my sleep…” His muttering increased with his venting. “Apparently you can get blown up by yourself, too.”_

_“I can—evidently do that,” she told him. Her tongue felt too big, and her head hurt. She raised a hand to check her face, and he caught her wrist._

_“Don’t—I’ve got about fourteen stitches in that gash, and I just got the glass out of your cheek and there’s three more stitches there.” The worry in his words punched up the anger in his tone. “Now I’m fixing your damn feet—you have like one inch shards buried all the way into your heel. What happened to your shoes?”_

_She’d lost both. Belatedly, she shook her head—which was a mistake. The pain increased, and nausea swam through her stomach. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. Pain could be managed._

_“How many?” Getting her respiration under control took a lot of effort.. As more awareness returned, so did the pain. She hurt—everywhere._

_“Five different bombings—including the car bombs outside the Belgian Embassy, and one at the club you were at.”_

_The club._

_His voice tightened, “Two hundred casualties in the early numbers, and countless wounded. They’ve called in the military and issued a curfew.” Something sharp pulled out of her foot, and there was almost instant relief. “You got caught on the radius of one the car bombs—you were walking around covered in blood Nat—what the hell were you thinking?”_

_“I’m thinking I got blown up,” she told him honestly. “And now I’m going to pass out again. Yell at me later?”_

_She met his fierce eyes._

_“Count on it,” he said, then his fury gave way to concern before his features blurred and she passed out._

The gossamer strands of memory made her smile. She and Clint had barely worked together for half a year since they’d let her out of isolation. A year after he brought her in, and it was her first overseas assignment for SHIELD, and it was supposed to be a milk run. Get some information, and send it back for action intelligence. No muss, no fuss. Clint was only there because they were partners, and she wasn’t allowed to fly solo yet.

Ridiculous, she had more experience than Clint, but she hadn’t minded. Then she’d been caught by a series of terrorist bombings in a freak incident. Clint had come running when the explosions began to detonate around the city. This after he’d woken to find her gone, and he’d been working himself up to a real tirade about her partnership skills or lack thereof.

Then he’d found her stumbling in the street, covered in blood. She’d cracked a few ribs, and her pelvis with the force she’d been thrown at the ground. Flying debris had cut her face, her arms, shredded her skirt, and apparently blown her shoes off.

She remembered none of it—just a white light, and the whining noise as she woke. They hunkered down in the hotel for a full day before he got them out. She managed to remember some of the intel she’d gathered, Clint called it in and then spent the majority of the next thirty-six hours berating her in between moments of treating her like spun glass. His words did not match his actions at all, and it confused the hell out of her—until she realized he cared.

The incident scared the hell out of him, and he cared what happened to her. He cared that she’d gotten torn up. He cared enough to not only run into the blast zone, but to carry her out and to make sure she was all right.

No one had ever cared whether she lived or died, just whether she finished the mission. Clint hadn’t given a damn about the mission, in fact when she’d tried to debrief, he’d glared at her so hard she’d actually worried he might hit her. He hadn’t looked that fierce the night he’d come to kill her.

Looking back—it was the first time she realized he didn’t think of her as just an asset, a tool. Funnily enough, it was also the day she considered kissing him for the first time. It took her six months to actually act on the impulse, and have him reject her gently before he told her about Laura. She wasn’t supposed to want anything for herself, but the fact he’d cared had shifted things for her and she needed time to figure out what it meant.

She hadn’t thought about that night in years. Shaking off the memory, she carried her cup back to the kitchen and washed it out. Then she made her way to the bathroom to check her appearance. The outfit was more than suitable for the lunchtime assignation. She didn’t expect it to be more than some posturing, proof of life, and the naming of the amount as well as some ridiculous gymnastics to get them their money.

It was fine. She just wanted the kid’s location.

 

**Clint**

 

 

He’d been awake for two hours, managed to wash up, shave, and get into clean clothes. One of the nurses had given him a haircut the day before, cleaned up the shaggy bits. While he’d lost some weight, he didn’t think he looked too bad. God knew he’d gotten a lot of sleep since Russia—he was practically drunk on it. PT kept him active, but hardly at his normal levels.

Still, they would be increasing his activity every week. His shoulder, though tender, had finally closed and they could take the stitches out in three days. Then he could begin using the arm weights in earnest. The last thing he could afford to lose was any more muscle or flexibility. His room in the medical wing was comfortable, if a little sterile. They promised he could downgrade after the stitches were out of his leg—at least another week—the bones would take far longer to fully fuse, but the surface injuries were healing remarkably well with his incredibly lack of being able to do anything else.

A rush of footsteps in the hall—rubber soles slapping against tile. Voices, young and high-pitched whispering as they egged each other on bounced around the pound of their feet. Then his door was shoved open, and a pair of eager eyes widened.

“Dad!”

“Daddy!”

Clint hadn’t decided on whether to settle into his wheelchair—which he hated—or on the sofa—which would keep him in one location—before they arrived. But when he suddenly had two armfuls of excited kids, he didn’t give a damn where he was sitting. Lila’s arms locked around his neck, and his arm curled around her instinctively even as Coop hit him from the side, hiding his excited and wet with tears face against Clint’s shoulder. Words failed him as he wrapped his free arm around Cooper.

His kids.

They smelled like watermelon slushies and sliced apples—their respective picks for shampoo—and fresh air and sunshine. They smelled like home. Their tight arms holding onto him felt like home. His throat closed as he fought against squeezing them too hard and yet he didn’t want to let them go. Over their heads, Laura walked into view, an arm full of squirming toddler who fought to lean away from her. Nate’s eyes were huge, and he babbled, “Da! Da! Da!”

God, she looked beautiful. Her brown hair with its varying shades of lighter, sun streaked golden brown had been braided back and away from her face. She wore a simple cream button down blouse and a pair of jeans. It was hard to catch his breath around the steadily growing lump setting up residence in his throat. He scooped Lila up closer so she could rest more on the sofa than his lap and Coop curved to tuck against his other side, careful of his fracture brace.

With a huff of almost affectionate exasperation, Laura set Nate down and his baby waddled—fuck he was walking—with distinct purpose, like a penguin on the run all the way to him. Coop and Lila both leaned forward together to help him clamber onto Clint’s uninjured leg and then Nate gave him a toothy smile, showing off the three new teeth to join the two he’d had when Clint had seen him last.

“Daddy! You’re crying?” Concern pitched Lila’s voice a little higher.

“Am I?” He laughed, needing another arm to hug Nate who was patting his face in wonder and babbling a stream of nonsensical words sprinkled with the occasional Da, Mama, LiLi and Coo.

“Take it easy, kids,” Laura said, her voice a soothing balm as she made her way to where he was buried under the pile. “Daddy’s hurt, and we’re going to not overdo it, all right?”

“I’m not, Mommy,” Lila promised, her face suddenly solemn. She disentangled herself, and Clint missed her immediately, but then she shifted to perch on the arm of the sofa right next to him. She had her tiny hand on his hair, and was petting it. “I’ll be careful like we had to when Lucky hurt his leg.”

Laughter wheezed out of him at the comparison. He’d adopted Lucky after finding the hurt dog on the side of the road, he’d been clipped by a car. Broken leg and a couple of cracked ribs. The enthusiastic pile of fur had barely seemed to notice his limitations when he’d carried the wiggling retriever into the house. Lila had been all of three at the time and she’d summarily decided to be his nurse, going so far as to sneak downstairs the first night and climb into the gated playpen area Clint had settled him into for the night.

Limiting a dog’s movements was a challenge, but not with Lila. She kept coming to him. The dog had been lucky, or so the vets said, but Clint and his kids always felt luckier and Laura—bless her, she’d indulged them all and they’d carved out a space for the dog immediately.

“Da! Da!” Nate babbled, patting his cheeks.

“Hey little man,” he greeted him. Clint kept darting his gaze from one child to the next, then back to Laura. He pretended not to notice Coop knuckling away the tears, or the way Lila’s fingers kept closing on him like he’d turn into smoke and disappear or how Nate stared at him as if trying to recognize him—or maybe memorizing him for the next big gap in his development Clint missed.

Laura settled into the chair to his left, propping her chin in her hand and her elbow on the arm. The kids filled him in on everything from school to the farm to Lucky to the trip, and the random in between bits.

It was glorious.

When Vision arrived to let him know breakfast had been set up in the solarium, the kids were willing enough to pile off of him and go meet the android. Fortunately, Vision seemed as fascinated with them as they were with him. Nate didn’t want to leave him. So Clint balanced him carefully as he shifted from the sofa to the wheelchair. His gaze collided with Laura’s once he was settled, and her mouth tightened into a thin line before she visibly relaxed it.

“Sorry,” he murmured to her.

“Don’t be,” she said, all cool and calm assurance. “You’re still here to see your kids. That’s the important part.” He hadn’t died. Hadn’t left his kids without a father or widowed his wife before the divorce was final.

Not exactly a laudable accomplishment, but he quirked a half smile. “I’m sorry for a lot of other things, too. But thank you.”

She hesitated and eyed him. “Thank me by showing me your skills in driving that thing are better than your skills behind the wheel of the car.”

The teasing insult batted at his pride. “Oh, woman. It’s on.”

Then setting Nate up to vroom vroom, he pushed his shoulder to get the wheelchair in motion as they followed after the kids. Nate’s giggles were the perfect soundtrack to accompany his vrooming.

For the first time in weeks, Clint truly relaxed. Not even the dull ache in his shoulder or the discomfort in his leg could diminish his mood. Nat was safe at the Tower, his kids were here, and he didn’t have to worry about any of them.

Could only be better if he weren’t in the damn wheelchair, but he’d take what he got. It was pretty damn good as it was.

 

 

**Natasha**

 

The café was practically deserted when she made her way inside and settled at the table in the corner near the window. Even with her back to the wall, it was still far too exposed. But the instructions had been specific. They wanted to be able to see her from the street, to know she was alone. She’d once again wrapped the white scarf lightly around her hair, the sunglasses hid her eyes and everything else about her said relaxed with a hint of tourist on the side.

Though she skimmed the street from behind the shield of her sunglasses, she knew her appearance gave her an almost insouciant air with her book open in front of her and a cup of strong, spiced coffee on the table next to it. She had finished her first cup and had just poured a second when the man who’d been leaning against the corner across the street and reading a newspaper made his way inside.

“Interrupting a good book should be a crime, but do you mind if I join you?” His accent was modified British, the cool southern urban English washing out any distinctive region from his voice as he delivered the challenge phrase.

“Please,” she murmured, taking an actual beat to look up as if she needed to finish a sentence. “Books are good companions, but they’ve already made their conversational decisions.”

The man across from her smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. He laid his folded newspaper on the table, and turned over the cup in front of him. Without looking away, she lifted the pot of coffee and poured him out a measure of the spiced beverage she’d actually been enjoying despite the circumstances.

He was looking her over, likely memorizing everything about her he could see as she did much the same for him. He was a little over six feet, dark hair, wide forehead, high cheekbones, and pointed chin though his close cropped beard disguised the effect. His blue eyes were cool, not cutting, assessing without malice.

“Simon Westbrook,” he said, offering his hand across the table.

“Nell Risha,” she answered. She was Hungarian today, a graduate student on journey of self-discovery. The Elizabeth Gilbert memoir she’d been reading affirmed it. This meeting, after all, was just two strangers having a casual encounter in a café in Casablanca no matter how prosaic the actual reason.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Risha.” So he wanted to extend the little game. Very well. “Have you been in Casablanca before?”

“Yes,” she told him. “But every time is like the first time.”

Amusement filtered into his eyes. If he wanted to get a read on her, he would have to work much harder. He was in his early forties, so not inexperienced and his gaze shifted periodically with an almost natural grace if not for the calculated way he swept the street, the café, and then returned to her. Aware of his surroundings—so the only question she had was a he a ringer, handling the professional transaction for the kidnappers as she was for Guerda?

After a sip of coffee, he let out a breath as though overcome by their interaction. “I almost hate to bring up business,” he admitted. “You’re much lovelier than I was expecting.”

“We must all learn to live with disappointment, _ilyen az élet_.” No familiarity registered in his eyes for the comment, but he could easily feign a lack of understanding.

She could.

“Perhaps we can indulge once we’ve finished our transaction, we’re both professionals after all,” he smoothed over the lie with a veneer of playfulness that neither suited the situation nor his posture. The fact he had a weapon in a shoulder holster under his right arm and a second, smaller but no less deadly pistol secured to his belt under his left told her he was left-handed and quite ready for business.

Fine. It was time for a show.

She leaned away from the table just enough to let the shawl slip off her shoulders. The pantsuit didn’t have sleeves, and though fitted at the waist, the rest of it was loose, softening her frame. Most men didn’t even notice the muscle, but for those who did, the more flowing outfits presented them with a much more gentle illusion. Though sleeveless, the top also hid the scar on her shoulder—though it continued to fade, like the one on her abdomen, it had been left open, roughly sutured, and then torn free during her fight at the Triskelion. She didn’t mind those scars though. So many vanished into her skin as if they never were.

These declared that she’d existed and more, that she’d survived.

His gaze dipped appreciatively, but without a doubt assessing. She wore no visible weapons. This was a negotiation, after all. Tsk tsk, Westbrook. One must really learn how to play if one wanted to challenge an expert.

“I believe you have something for me,” she said after letting him get an eyeful. She watched him over the rim of the cup as she took a sip. Still, the sunglasses stayed right where they were. He’d made her sit in the sun pouring in the glass, and given her the perfect excuse. If he’d thought the location would make her uncomfortable, he was sadly mistaken.

“I do,” he said without much fanfare and a disappointed sigh. He pressed the newspaper across the table toward her, his hand firm on it. So until he moved the hand, she didn’t try to accept it. “Negotiations begin the moment you open this, neither of us walks away until we’ve reached an agreeable transaction.”

In other words, it was on.

A dark car idled down the street. It had pulled up to the curb and seemingly parked about the time Westbrook left his position to join her. A single driver in the front seat.

Their ride, presumably.

She had really hoped she’d been wrong about the negotiation. But she’d prepared for it.

“Of course,” she told him. “I would expect nothing less. It’s taken you this long to reach out, I would assume you’d want it wrapped swiftly.”

He nodded. “As long as we understand each other.”

“I’m quite certain we do.”

Releasing the paper, he motioned to the waitress for the check and Nell took a moment to set her coffee down before she pulled the paper over and flipped it open. Inside were three photos—the seven-year-old boy Mateo looked healthy, if scared. His eyes were wide, but unmarked. His face showed no bruises. But the lack of bruising didn’t mean he was well treated. She’d taken many beatings that hadn’t left a visible mark.

He lifted his shirt in one, his chest was clear and he wore ragged shorts—had the not allowed the boy to change since they’d snatched him from football practice. His sneakers were dirty, and stained red along the side as were his socks. It was a rusty color, not blood—but actual rust perhaps. Or red dust. There were some older, sandstone apartments on the southern reaches of the town, near the desert. They were areas of red brick and clay, imported from the interior to add a touch of mystery to cream stone. Red soil enriched with iron and aluminum were not common here, but Kenya and across Africa to the south? Yes.

Each photo included a copy of the newspaper, dated today, and she flipped to the front of the paper he’d handed her. This paper. This date. So he’d taken and printed these photos in the last few hours since the paper released.

Mateo was in Casablanca.

Excellent.

“I take it everything is in order?”

“It would seem,” she commented, as though still preoccupied with the images and hungry to see the little boy was fine meanwhile she studied him from beneath her lashes. The corners of his mouth kicked a little higher, and his respiration increased—a fractional measure, yet present. A single drop of sweat followed the path of his hair line, though he used the cloth napkin to touch each cheek, and swipe it away before he put a few dirham on the check to cover the cost of her coffee.

How generous.

“What is the ask?” she said finally, slipping the photos into her shoulder bag, then closing the newspaper.

“We’re going to take a ride,” he told her, all perfectly pleasant. “The ask will be handled in person, we won’t accept no for an answer. You can walk away of course, but the offer will expire.”

The boy would was what he meant.

“I understand,” she said, gathering her shawl and draping it over her shoulders as she stood. “I’m ready to go if you are.”

That hint of a smile betrayed him again, even his eyes brightened a fraction. It was all going so well. She wouldn’t argue, after all, a boy’s life was on the line. If they wanted to talk finances in person, there was a security in that. No recordings. No chance of involving anyone else.

Movement on a roof across the street tracked them as they left the café. Westbrook touched his fingers to her lower back, a light brush as though guiding her. He led her to the dark car, and opened the rear door behind the driver. The figure on the roof was slender, dark skinned, and vanished almost as soon as she’d noted their position in a flash of dark green.

Once she was seated, he closed the door and then circled to the other side and slid into the seat next to her. The moment his door closed, the driver pulled away. The man in the front was nearly bald, thicker jowled, and heavier set. But his eyes were wary, and watchful. He kept glancing at her via the rearview mirror.

They drove less than a couple of miles with Westbrook offering little in the way of conversation, gradually leaving behind thicker traffic for a more isolated portion of the city.

“You will understand, after all,” Westbrook was saying. “As one professional to another, I take no pleasure in these activities.”

“Stealing children to force their fathers into giving you what you want?” She kept her tone conversational. “Everyone has to make a living, I suppose.”

His weight shifted, his hand drifting closer to his gun. So they weren’t waiting until they arrived. That was unsurprising. The area around them was empty, as though abandoned, and perfect for this kind of assassination.

She didn’t want to endanger the boy more than he already had been.

“It is not about a living, Agent Romanova,” Westbrook’s voice shifted, his accent abandoning the British and taking on a more distinctive Muscovite. “Cleaning up after the KGB has been a lifelong assignment.” Yes, he wasn't exactly that old, nor would it be lasting much longer.

His fingers closed on the hilt of the weapon, and she struck, two hard swift blows one to his solar plexus to drive all the air out of his lungs, and the second to his throat to choke him. The driver reached back for her and bent drove her fist into the softness between his thumb and forefinger. He hissed, but she was already grappling with Westbrook and his gun, pointing it up at the ceiling of the vehicle. Her arm locked through his, giving him no maneuverability.

Two rapid shots fired through the roof.

Then a third, and she broke his finger to loosen his grip on the handgun.

A fourth shot went wild and out the windshield before she shoved the muzzle downward, breaking another finger on his hand and ripping the gun free. Turning it over in her palm, she ignored the sizzle of heat as the muzzle burned her skin and pistol whipped it against Westbrook’s face driving him against the passenger door. One blow to his forehead, and a second to his nose, she broke the later, and then pressed him to the door as she grabbed the handle. The car door swung open and he was half out of the car before he realized what was happening.

The driver twisted, the car was still accelerating, and he had a gun. She grabbed it and aimed it at the ceiling too even as she slammed both her feet against Westbrook. It took two kicks and he was tumbling away from the moving car, hitting the pavement and rolling. Taking away the driver’s gun was much easier, he had no angle and the car swerved wildly as he fought her, but she got the gun away, and hit his seatbelt lock in the same move. And then reached past him to yank the wheel hard before falling back into her seat and pulling the seatbelt around her like a grappling line.

The driver let out a shout as they plowed right into a building, the impact jettisoned him through the windshield and she gritted her teeth as her whole body jarred. Then she was pushing away from the belt, grabbing the first gun, she stripped it and through the pieces into the front.

Slipping out of the car, she shouldered her bag, and straightened her shawl before she disassembled the second gun as she walked away from the accident and back to where Westbrook crawled on the ground. He seemed to sense her coming, because there was an urgency to his haphazard movements, his leg was broken, and probably a lot more. His face had the cheese-grated appearance of road rash.

Though he rolled over with a pain huff and fumbled for his second gun, she removed it easily and then stepped on his hand. His eyes watered and the pained noise spilling from his throat climbed.

Now that she has his attention, she pulled apart the gun, flicking the bullets from the magazine one at a time as though dispensing Tic-Tacs. “As one professional to another,” she repeated back his earlier phrase. “You will understand when I tell you it was an interesting, if sloppy effort. Where is the boy?”

“Why the fuck would I tell you?” Pain and anger choked in his voice. His breathing had a sloshy sound. That wasn’t good—for him.

“Because you must have really pissed your bosses off to get this shit assignment.”

He laughed and it had no mirth. “I volunteered.”

“And they let you—they know exactly what I’m capable of and you should have done your homework. Now where is the boy? The SVR will not be bringing in a Black Widow today.”

“Why would I tell you?” he repeated, the wet sound in his lungs growing more labored.

“Because you and I are professionals, and he’s a child.” It was worth a shot, not that she expected him to develop a conscience and confess anything. The boy had only ever been leverage against Guerda to pay the ransom in the form of her. That was why his father said any terms were acceptable and he’d pay her in information.

He never expected to have to deliver.

“Very well,” she said, straightening. She went to his broken leg and applied pressure to where blood poured from a wound. His scream climbed, but he wasn’t going to talk. Some agents were just like that.

She was, after all. Pitching the broken pieces of his weapon away, she pivoted to walk away.

“Where are you going?” He wheezed. It wouldn’t be long now.

Drowning in your own blood was an agonizing way to die. One professional to another, he asked for it when he put a kid in the middle of this.

“Sightseeing,” she answered him, but continued toward the abandoned building at the end of the street. Thankfully, she’d worn a pair of comfortable boots. If she had to make the walk in heels, she’d be in a worse mood when she arrived. The sandstone apartments weren’t far from here with their red clay bricks and gardens.

The flash of movement from the corner of her eye steadied as she made her way into the shadows of what might have been a market at one point. It only took a couple of minutes for the woman to break cover and approach, her hands open. “You handled that very well,” she said, her accent familiar, but Natasha couldn’t place it immediately.

She shrugged. “You followed me for a reason?” Because the dark-skinned woman with her green silk headscarf and blousy tunic and loose pants had been the figure on the rooftop near the café.

“I was following them,” she murmured, jerking a thumb towards the man still dying in the street. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I’d apologize, but they weren’t exactly interested in my well-being.”

“No,” the woman said slowly. “I can see that…do you need a ride back?”

“Not at the moment. I have an appointment.” The woman was not a friend, but she was also not a foe. The calculating look in her eye, the weighing of observation versus information was familiar.

“Will it take long?” An arched eyebrow, and the vaguest hint of amusement.

Natasha shrugged. “It depends on how cooperative that bunch is. But I’m very persuasive.”

She checked her watch, then nodded. “Two blocks south. A little crossover. I’ll give you thirty minutes?”

Considering she still needed to locate the actual apartment they had the boy in, it might take her a little longer.

“Forty-five,” came the final offer. “After that, I’ll be gone.”

“You don’t have to wait at all.” She wasn’t interested in taking a child into another possible ambush.

“No, I don’t,” the woman smiled. “Call me curious. You interest me. And I’d like to know your name.” With that she walked away, and didn’t look back.

After fixing her shawl, Natasha rewrapped her scarf and waited until her acquaintance vanished. Then she moves toward the shadows of the building and makes her way across it.

She knew when she was being watched.

Whoever the woman was, she wasn’t following.

Good.

 

 

**Clint**

 

Breakfast was a boisterous affair. Lila chattered nonstop, filling him in on literally everything. Including the surprise baby bunnies in the hutch in the school, the fact she did get her part in the pageant and she was going to be a daffodil. Cooper had mastered some new tricks on his bike, and he promised to make a video when he got home. He’d also earned straight As for the last two terms, and wanted to know if that was worth a new video game system he’d been eyeing.

Laura gave him a disapproving look when Clint pretended to consider it, but laughed when he squinted at Cooper and said, that earning good grades was a responsibility not the product of bribery. His son pretended to be disappointed and rolled his eyes, but his grin gave him away when Clint suggested that they check out the video game system in the common room of the Avengers wing. Since no one but Avengers could be on this side of the building and all the labs were secure, it was a pretty safe place for the kids to hang out.

After breakfast, he made good on his promise. Nate had conked out against his chest, sound asleep. Lila and Cooper raced Mario Karts, arguing cheerfully. He’d put PT off until the afternoon so he could spend the morning with them. Laura and the kids could only stay three days, they still had school and there was work at the farm and more. But he wanted to soak up every single minute with them.

“How are you doing really?” She asked as she settled onto the chair next to his. They were quiet, not letting their voices carry. It was an old habit.

“I’m better now,” he told her truthfully. “I’ve missed you guys.”

“I know.” No judgment hung in those two words. “But how are you doing with the leg? You don’t like being benched.”

“No,” he agreed with her. “But it could have been worse. I’m back here…got this great piece of jewelry, and I can see my kids—so I’m counting it all as a win.”

“Why are you still on house arrest when the others aren’t?” By others, she meant Cap, and Wilson—both of whom were back to work without the benefit of ankle monitoring. Hell even Barnes had managed to dodge that bullet.

“Cause I took the deal, and it’s not so bad.” Maybe if his leg weren’t still broken it would chafe more. “Gives me more incentive to not push it with the leg.

“Right up until you think you need to move, and then you’re going to be on the go broken leg or not.” The droll acceptance in her tone gave him pause. Sadness crept in around the edges of her expression, but she shook them away with a little wiggle, and then she leaned forward to cradle her coffee cup.

“How are you doing?” He worried about asking that question sometimes. Worried she’d tell him how bad he’d fucked things up for her. But that was a selfish worry, and Laura deserved better.

“Surprisingly, not bad. I’ve been thinking about going back to work.” She glanced at the kids playing the game, then Nate. She was always checking on them, always aware on some subconscious level where they were and what they were doing. It was how she always seemed to anticipate what they wanted. “Nate’s still little, but I can do some part-time stuff from home. There’s a couple of online specialty schools for students who home school. I could be an online teacher, a few hours each day and still be there when the kids get home and while Nate’s playing.”

The argument between the kids started to escalate. “Cooper,” Clint said his name. It was all he needed to say and the boy backed down a little.

“Sorry Dad.” But at Clint’s meaningful look, Cooper sighed. “Sorry Lila.”

“It’s okay, Coop.” Lila was swift to anger, but even swifter to forgive. She smacked a kiss to her brother’s cheek and he grumbled, but didn’t shove her away. Then they were back into the race.

“I get wanting something more to do,” he said carefully. “But is an online job going to be enough?” She’d loved being in a classroom, shepherding her kids from one activity to the next. He was pretty sure it was how she’d gotten good at wrangling him. Not that he minded being plied with juice rewards and indulged when he felt like taking apart some other area of the house and fixing it up.

“For now. It’ll be a little more income, something to fill in the hours. I can consider going back to the classrooms after Nate’s ready for school.” Which would be another few years.

The conversation lulled as he tried to wrap his mind around what she wanted him to say. What did she need him to say? They didn’t need the money. The one thing he’d done right from the beginning was to put away funds with every single check he’d ever earned. That had turned into a tidy nest egg, and it had grown over the last two decades. There wasn’t Stark level money in that fund, but Laura wouldn’t need to work, and they’d be able to afford most of the kids’ college education. Nate coming along would strain it some, but he had time to add to it.

“You know, if that’s what you want to do…I’ll do everything I can to support it.” Not that what he could do was much. He was here, and they were there. She was raising the kids, and he wanted to get back to raising his bow. It sounded lame even to him.

“Yes,” she told him with a kind smile he didn’t deserve. “I do know that. But that’s not something for us to worry about this weekend. This is about you and the kids, and having real time together…I just wish…you know…” She motioned to his leg.

“Yeah, me too. But it’s not so bad…I can get whatever I want to eat delivered to this place.” Being injured had to have some perks.

“What are the chances you can get funnel cake?” Laura challenged. “Or bread bowls with soup?”

“Oh, you want funnel cake?” Ha. He could do that.

“Hmm.” Amusement flickered in her eyes, and he eased out his phone, careful not to disturb the baby. Having Nate sleeping so peacefully against his chest was doing wonders for him. There was just something deeply satisfying about having one of his kids so comfortable and relaxed that they could sleep that close to him. He still had that baby smell about him, no matter how big he got. “I got you covered.”

He fired off a text to Friday with his requests. The AI responded that she had already made the order and he glanced at the camera lens in the corner and grinned. Then sent her a thanks.

“You’re enjoying that a little too much,” Laura teased and he grinned at her.

“Being able to do fun things for you? I don’t get to enjoy that enough.” A light red flush touched her cheeks and satisfaction expanded in his chest, it was a little goofy and at the same time entirely welcome.

They were quiet for a few moments, and then her hand settled on his arm and he pulled his attention from the kids back to her. “Clint, where’s Nat?”

 

 

**Natasha**

 

She found her target in the third building. Most of the apartments were unoccupied, their doors hanging off hinges, and windows cracked if not outright broken. Demonstrations had waded through this area of town a few years ago, the protestors had ransacked their way across the neighborhood, and left destruction in their wake. Families had been displaced, businesses shuttered, and the whole area left to the occasional party or squatter—not that the local police were likely to let them linger.

The building in question was in the center of the block, tucked behind a little gate with a courtyard. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but the best places never did. Five floors. Plenty of balconies and no elevator. They had one guy on the roof, but he was smoking and looking toward the center of the city, not even pretending to keep watch on the street.

They’d hear a car here with no problem, but had the heard the crash? She considered the angles. Maybe not. Before easing into the courtyard, she slipped off the white scarf and shawl, and left both in her bag, tucked behind some debris outside the gate and out of sight. The black pantsuit was more than loose enough for her to move in, and would blend in better in the shadows.

First, locate Mateo.

Second, get Mateo out.

One on the roof. Time to find out how many were inside.

Inside the building, she made her way up the stairs, falling back a step if someone moved along the landing above. Most of them appeared to be three to four floors up. The Stairs were wide, and moved in a squared circle to climb the building. The geometric pattern reflected on the tiles lining the floors. This had probably been quite a lovely place to live before the protests left it uninhabitable.

Might be worth an investment toward the future.

She’d mention it to Isaiah.

Then she was on the third floor, and she tilted her head, listening for movement above. Last apartment, overlooking the courtyard on the east side of the building. Heavy footsteps, two—maybe three men.

That was five if she counted the guy on the roof.

On the balcony, she climbed onto the railing and pressed right against the building. Muted voices reached her. Ukrainian voices, but not Muscovites. Westbrook might have been SVR. These guys were definitely not.

That made them a tad more unpredictable.

A step onto the patio above, the strike of a match, and then the fresh burnt smell of paper and tobacco preceded a man’s voice saying, “We wait. That’s what we do, now shut up and go feed the boy.”

Mateo was definitely here.

She allowed herself a smile. Then listened for the footsteps. They moved across the apartment, and then a door opened…southeast corner. Based on the layout of the apartment she was in, that was a small bedroom. No patio, one window.

A length of rope hung on a hook of the patio, next to an all weather tool case. She pulled the rope over her head to hang diagonal over her body. The case opened without a squeak. She removed a couple of small hand wrenches, fitting them against her palms.

Finding one that would work, she put the rest back.

Then she moved to the bedroom below Mateo’s and opened the window. It slid quietly even if it took a bit of force. Leaning out, she checked the terrain. It was about a ten foot climb to the window above, and there wasn’t much in the way of handholds.

They were at a corner of the building, and one side jutted out a little farther than the other, creating a lip. Between it and the window, she had something to grip and use to climb against.

She could make that work.

Her muscles protested with the effort to shimmy up ten feet as she climbed as high as she could before pushing away from the lip to catch the windowsill. Then it was a dead pull to hoist herself to eye level. The window was dirty, obscuring the room somewhat, but she spotted Mateo right away. He sat on a dirty mattress in the corner, his eyes dull and his expression sad. A man entered, carrying a plate of something and Mateo folded himself back into the corner, knees to his chest and fear skittered across his features.

“Eat,” the man barked, and dropped the plate onto the mattress next to him. Some bread bounced, and cold rice, chunked together, spilled onto the mattress. The man pivoted and stormed out, the door slamming behind him.

Mateo made no move to go to the plate, but his gaze seemed pinned on that door. Was he afraid they were coming back? Most people made the mistake of thinking kids didn’t understand how harsh the world could be, because they seemed to accept everything on face value.

But that was what made kids understand evil with a kind of clarity adults lacked. Adults made excuses. They pointed to bad upbringings. Stressful events. Alcohol. They left the burden of shitty behavior firmly in the lap of some outside cause.

Some people were just assholes.

Others were plain evil.

Kids weren’t fooled for long. Even when you dressed it up in finery and gave it silk gloves—a gloved hit still hurt, and a man could smile prettily when he beat you within an inch of your life, and then insisted you thank them for it. Women were equally as capable of digging their nails into your flesh until you bled while admonishing you that silence was the goal.

People, in a nutshell, sucked.

When no one else appeared, she pulled herself higher and kept her attention divided between Mateo and the door. She had to get the window open, and inside without alerting his captors or scaring the kid. Sweat slicked her back, but she pushed the muscle strain and discomfort away.

The only thing that mattered was the mission.

Movement on the mattress had her locking gazes with the little boy. His eyes widened and she pressed a finger to her lips. He jerked his gaze to the door, then back at her. She mouthed _it’s okay,_ but kept her finger where it was. The act meant she had to hold on with only one hand and her shoulder burned, but she ignored the sensation.

When she pointed to the window, and the lock, she mimed turning it, then waited for his response. His panicky expression gave way to one a little calmer, and he bit his lip. Yes, he was terrified, but he was a fighter. He hadn’t given up.

She held tight and let him work it out. Finally, he nodded and crept off the mattress. With a stolen look at the door at every step, he made it to the window and had to climb to reach the little lock. Thankfully it turned easily enough. Flattening her hand against the glass she began pushing it upward.

It groaned, and she went still. Mateo whipped to look at the door, and they both waited. After a minute, he looked back at her and gave her a little thumbs up.

Smart kid.

With a smile, she pushed against the glass again and edged the window higher. Then his little fingers were under the frame of the window and pushing it up, too. Between them they got it wide enough she could slip inside.

On crouched feet, she took a beat to catch her breath and gave him a once over. Dirty, scared, and tired—but whole and in one piece. That was good.

In a low voice, she asked him if he spoke Spanish or Italian. He nodded once. Then held up two fingers.

He spoke both.

Good.

Quietly, she motioned him back to the corner of the outside wall, away from the door and the window. Then she removed the plate from the mattress and tugged it over to hide him behind it.

With hand gestures and near silent words, she told him to stay down low, laying on the floor. Don’t get up, no matter what he heard. She would come back for him when it was safe. She added a second mattress to the first. They wouldn’t stop any bullets, but most would be going high, and they would help muffle the sound.

When the little boy caught her hand, she gave his fingers a little squeeze. “Your Papa sent me,” she told him gently and his eyes went huge. Brushing the disheveled hair away from his forehead, she patted the floor. “Now lay down, cover your head, and don’t listen, little one, all right? I will come back for you?”

“ _Hai promesso_?” Did she promise?

 _“Prometto il piccolo.”_  Yes, little one. She promised. She gave him a smile, and his answering twitch of lips accompanied watery eyes, and he nodded then scootched into the hidey hole she’d made.

Rising, she moved to the door and listened. Male voices drifted down the hall, but none sounded close. That didn’t mean there weren’t any right outside the door, but she fisted the wrench in her left pocket anyway before she eased the door open.

To get Mateo out, she needed to clear the path and anyone who might be in their way.

 

 

**Clint**

 

 

Laura shifted Nate over to sleep in a travel playpen she’d brought with her. Covering him with a blanket and then admonishing Cooper and Lila to keep it down so their brother didn’t get jarred awake, then the two of them headed outside, Clint in his chair and Laura walking with him. The cooler air was welcome, but Clint didn’t want to go too far. They could see the kids inside and Friday also had eyes on them. But this wasn’t a conversation he wanted either to overhear.

Once the door was closed, Laura folded her arms and studied him. “Okay, we’re alone.”

“Laur…”

“Where’s Nat, Clint? She was with you and now you’re here and hurt, and she’s not. I saw the news…” Of course she had. “I saw some of the clips about Ross sending her to assassinate Steve and Tony.”

“Then you also saw the fact that all of that information was turned over and it got him removed.” Criminal charges were still pending, but he’d lost his authority and his position of power with both the President and the committee. He was still out there, but she’d neutered him.

“Yes, but where is she?”

He winced. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

“So you can’t tell me,” she said slowly, her gaze going distant as she looked away from him toward the woods where he and Cap had gone to talk by the river.

“No,” he said slowly. He could lie to her. It wouldn’t be the first or even the last. But this was a trickier subject. Laura and Nat were friends, they’d been friends for years. Nat was godmother to their kids—their favorite aunt. She’d been there when Lila was born, and she was more than friend, she was family.

“Do you know?” It was a low question, loaded with all kinds of meaning he didn’t want to parse.

“I can’t tell you that either.” He held out a hand to her, and leaned forward in the chair. “Laura…it’s not safe for you to know. It’s not safe for anyone to know.”

“But you do.” She looked to him, then his hand and she dropped her arms and took the offering. Her palm was a little damp where it glided against his. Closing his fingers around her hand, he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Nat’s still wanted by a lot of governments, including ours. I don’t know when I’ll hear from her.” She’d been pretty quiet at the Tower, and after talking to Steve the other night, he had an idea of why. Hopefully Cap got his shit together. “Laur, you can’t ask. Just—don’t talk to anyone about her. Tell the kids she’s on a mission, they know what it means.”

“Is that why she hasn’t called?” The note of hurt raked across him.

“Probably,” he told her gently. “You know how she is, she’ll never put any of you in danger.” She’d cleaned the files, she’d made damn sure any mention of his family was not present, then scrubbed the SHIELD files of his connection to Nat to reinforce the idea. Over the years, she’d played the role of girlfriend/lover, and let everyone at SHIELD presume it. If someone wanted to get even with Clint, she’d let them come after her. He had no problem doing the same to keep her back safe, but…Nat always put his family first.

“I hate that she’s out there alone now,” Laura sighed, and she dropped to sit on the bench next to his chair. She hadn’t let go of his hand. “I didn’t particularly care for you being out here, but at least when you were together…”

“Yeah.” God, he’d never deserved Laura. She never doubted his partnership with Nat, never let it get to her, and she’d even claimed on more than one occasion she liked Nat better. “I know she wanted to sweetheart. For what it’s worth—she was pretty irked with me about everything.”

A little half-snort and laugh. “She asked me if I was ready to talk about it, and at the time, no I wasn’t—and now…”

Now she was and Nat was out of reach. “I’d offer to let you talk to me, but I have a feeling I’m a poor substitute.”

“Pretty much,” she told him, smile wry. “Lila asks about her all the time. And I can’t keep the news from them forever. The kids at school…”

Yeah the little assholes were gonna be assholes. “Then we tell them the truth. Their Auntie Nat is a hero, but not every hero is lauded. Some are pilloried.”

“It’s not fair—you’re all getting cleared. Steve and Tony worked out their ridiculous fight, and she’s the one out there… I don’t like it. It’s SHIELD all over again.” Her mouth set into a thin line. Natasha had gone off the grid after SHIELD fell, she pulled away from them to protect them.

Clint had hated it then, too. At least he _knew_ where she was right now. Knew she had Tony, Bucky, and Steve watching her back. It was cold comfort. “She’s going to be okay,” he told Laura, then lifted her hand to kiss her wrist. “I promise. It’s Nat…you know her.”

His wife gave him a look. “Yes, Clint. I do _know_ her…I know she’ll let the world fall on her before she asks for help, and she’ll never bring danger to darken someone’s door, which means she has to survive on her own. I don’t care that she did it before—she shouldn’t have to do it now.”

“Trust me,” he told Laura, locking his gaze on her. “She’s going to be okay.” She was okay. She was safe.

But Laura didn’t believe him, or maybe she didn’t want to. After everything, maybe he couldn’t fault that. For now, it was all he could give her. Nat’s safety and his family’s safety were too important to risk to even the smallest of slips.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, wishing he had something else to offer.

“Me, too.” But her gaze remained distant. “There has to be something we can do.”

They were working on it. “It’s going to take time.”

With a shake of her head, she frowned at him and then tugged her hand away. “Then maybe we need more people doing something and not just a few.”

What the hell did that mean?

 

 

**Natasha**

 

 

Pressing herself against the wall just outside the living room, she used a cracked mirror to identify their positions. One man in the kitchen, another at the table, and a third heading in her direction—good, there were still only three in the apartment. Her breathing slowed, her mind cleared, and she focused. Three targets.

First the man approaching. She met him with her fist wrapped around the wrench. The blow to the nose shattered bone, and then she had him in an arm lock and drove him back to the other two.

There was a shout, but she was already turning him, using the force of him to slam him into the guy rushing out of the kitchen, as they went down in a tangle, she whirled and unlooped the rope. It wasn’t a whip, but the heavy weave hurt like hell when it struck the third man rising from the table across the eyes. He dropped his knife, hands going to protect his face.

Once. Twice. And on the third blow, he was collapsing. Spinning she caught the kitchen man’s extended, pistol wielding arm and wrapped the rope around his wrist, so she could keep control of his gun. It fired. The gunshots echoing loudly in the closed space. Dancing, she had her back to his and they shot the guy at the table together and she lashed out with a foot as broken nose made it to his knees. That sent the bone into his brain and when he toppled over, he wasn’t getting up.

Jerking the rope tight, she pulled the last man’s gun arm down even as she turned into him. Two sharp hard shots to his kidney and the gun fell out of his fingers. Dude was big though, so he roared as he swung at her and she avoided the first one, but the second caught her right across the face. He had enough force in that arm, he knocked her right on her ass.

Eyes watering from the blow, she rolled and yanked the rope. Off balance as he was, he stumbled forward and she launched upward, catching another length of the rope around his neck and then twisting and flipping them both so he flew over and landed on his back. Rolling onto her feet, she twisted free of the rope, giving herself slack as she kicked his gun away. There was a boiling pot on the stove and she grabbed it just in time for the hall guard to charge in, shouting.

The hot water in it made it unwieldy, but she flung the whole thing at him. The boiling water struck first and he howled, then the cast iron pot clocked him in the face and he went down.

Her rope ensnared target was already on his feet, and lumbering at her in a rush. It was like fighting an elephant. She rippled the rope and it caught him right in the balls on the upswing and clutched himself.

Men.

Grabbing another coffee carafe off the counter, she smashed the glass against his head and then wound the rope around him as she got behind him and then pulled. The rope tangled his arms, and locked on his throat. For a minute, the image of Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt danced across her mind’s eye and she actually laughed before hauling on the rope with every ounce of her strength. She had to use the leverage and his lack of oxygen.

Boiled Fett was stumbling upward and she needed Jabba here down before Boba over there made a charge. There was a crunch as she gritted her teeth and then a definitive crack as bone snapped beneath the force of the rope and Jabba dropped like a sack. She released the rope and blocked the first blow from Boba, and sucked up the second to her gut. There was still rope snared around her and she used it to block his arm on the upswing, and jabbed his knee with a kick as she twisted into him—her back to his chest, and then she flipped him over her shoulder.

One.

Two.

Three swift punches to the head and he went limp.

She just got the last of the rope untangled from her torso when the roof guard charged into the room pistol out and firing. She dove behind the counter as bullets peppered the tile, the glass, the open flame from the burner she’d pulled the pot off of. Staying low, she opened a cabinet and dragged out another pair of pots.

The minute his pistol clicked onto empty, she was up and she threw the first pot using sound as a direction. It caught his arm and knocked the gun free, the second only managed to his shoulder.

He let out a roar, and came right for her. Like Jabba, he was a big dude and her first blow to his chest didn’t even slow him down. He got his meaty hands on her throat and then she hit the wall. His fingers tightened and she drove her thumbs into his eyes. He screamed and she grit her teeth. It became a race to see who could apply the most pressure.

When her thumb sank in with a sickening pop, he screamed and his hands loosened, she shifted her balance and went up, shaking off his stranglehold and got her thighs up around his head and then they were falling, and she twisted him—his neck snapped before she hit the floor and rolled back to her feet.

Coughing, she glanced around the destroyed room.

All targets down.

She grabbed a sealed water bottle off the counter, washed out her mouth and spit blood. Then she rinsed off her hands. She blotted up any specks of blood. Her throat was one fire and her cheek throbbed. Bruised hands and body, but she didn’t think she’d broken anything. After taking a long drink, she grabbed a second bottle and returned to the bedroom.

“ _Vieni piccolo, cravatta per andare_.” Fuck, her voice was raw, but Mateo stuck his head out from behind the mattress when she told him to come out, it was time to go. His eyes were wide. “ _É sicuro_ ,” she assured him. It was safe.

He rushed over to her, and she scooped him up then pressed a water bottle into his hands.

“ _Chiudi gli occhi_ ,” she whispered for him to close his eyes, and when he pressed his face to her neck, she carried him out of the apartment, avoiding the destruction in the front room. They made it down the stairs unmolested, and then into the courtyard, and finally past the gate where she held onto him while she grabbed her bag.

She made it to the corner and slowed when she found the dark skinned woman watching her standing next to the open door of her car. Her vantage gave her a good eye on the apartment building, and she glanced at it, then at Nat and finally to the little boy.

“Where do you need to go?” she asked in her perfectly accented English.

“The ferry to Spain.”

The woman nodded slowly. “It would be my honor to escort you.”

Nat stared at her. They didn’t have time to linger here on the off chance those five weren’t all that was left. Mateo clung to her, and he stared from her to the woman then back.

“I will see you both safe to Spain,” the woman repeated. Nothing in her manner or her directness promised a threat directed at either of them. It was the softness in her eyes when she focused on Mateo that convinced Natasha, though. “You’re already wounded and he’s exhausted.”

“Natasha,” she said by way of introduction.

“Nakia,” the woman answered with a smile. “Let’s go…and next time, invite me to the party.”

“That’s not what I would call a party,” she assured her as she carried Mateo over. He slid into the backseat, but clung to her hand when she started to back out. Then she climbed in with him and he glued himself to her side.

“So,” Nakia said as she accelerated. “Come to Morocco often?”

“Oh, you know…” Natasha exhaled. “I like the shopping.”


	16. Intelligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pulling threads...

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Intelligence**

**Natasha**

 

 

It was nearly three in the morning when Antonio Guerda dismissed his security team upon arriving at his villa in Nerja. The curt orders sent the men away. Inside, he secured the door and reengaged the alarm system before making his way wearily to his office. Tie loosened, he freed his gun from its holster and set it on his desk before crossing to the bar. After splashing some rum into a glass, he set the decanter back and then stilled the moment he recognized he wasn’t alone in the room.

Natasha made no pretense of who she was while she waited. Her red hair fell in blunt, straight lines past her shoulders. The unrelieved black clothes helped her meld into the shadows as she’d infiltrated his home and put an exhausted Mateo to bed. The staff had already gone for the night, so she settled in to wait. She’d used enough cosmetics to diminish the blackened color of her eye and cheek. She could do nothing about the swelling. The choker of bruises around her throat remained disguised behind the high collar of the turtle neck she’d slipped on before donning a black leather jacket.

Primarily because Antonio Guerda owed her information, but mostly because she wouldn’t leave Mateo unattended. The boy’s mother had passed away in childbirth. He had no other family save for a pair of elderly maternal great grandparents who were neither healthy nor spry enough to take on the burden of a seven year old.

“Signorina Romanoff—or is it Romanova? I am never certain of these things,” he commented as cooly as possible for a man whose security had been rattled as badly as his had. Though his gaze went to the weapon he’d left on his desk. He’d never make it that far, and he had to know it.

At forty-five, Guerda had made a significant reputation for himself. Born in Italy, raised in Europe, Asia, and later Africa and now living in Spain—Guerda was an arms dealer who seemed to prefer to do business with rebellious elements not generally linked to terrorism. It was part of what made him not evil, but not particularly good, either.

“Signor Guerda,” she replied politely.

“You have learned they asked me to deliver the Black Widow as the ransom for my son.” It wasn’t a question.

“I did.”

“Are you here to kill me, Signorina Romanova?” So he’d decided on the name he would use. She hadn’t been Romanova by choice in decades, but she would never not be her.

“I could,” she said conversationally. “But since your son is sleeping in his bed upstairs, I think it better if we keep this to at least the pretense of civil.”

The man staggered and leaned against the bar heavily. He ripped his gaze from her and looked to the door. The naked relief in his expression left his feelings utterly exposed. Guerda loved his son.

Good.

“You brought him home?”

“It was what you contracted me for, was it not?” It was an idle question, of course she knew what he meant, but it was always better to verify.

“Yes, to pay whatever was necessary.” He frowned, then tossed back the full measure of the rum. His expression tightened, then he looked to her. “The men who took him?”

“Will never touch him again.”

The cold look in his eyes she understood very well. He stared at her a moment, as if searching for the truth in her statement, and then he nodded. Straightening, he motioned to the bar, “May I pour you something?”

“No thank you. I came for my payment.” And to make sure that his motives were what she suspected them to be. Guerda had wanted his son. No payment had been too high to pay—not even betraying the Black Widow and all the risks that implied.

“William Burnside is currently living under the name Mitchell Faulks. He has a residence in Leesburg, Virginia—a hundred acres disguised as a horse farm where he raises hunter-jumpers. He has been there since the fall of your SHIELD, and he rarely leaves his residence.”

Natasha nodded once.

“The Watchdogs have moved their base of operations—they split it between Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the north, and New Orleans, Louisiana in the south. They have been stockpiling steadily, offering significant funds for high energy dispersal weapons and any Chitauri weaponry that can be found—even broken ones.”

Unsurprising. Divided bases also made sense.

Guerda poured himself another drink. “There is a shipment arriving at the Port of New Orleans next week on a freighter with Panamanian flags. Shipping container 804921. The weaponry in that shipment were all deemed active, and functional.” He lifted his glass to her.

“Do the Watchdogs still report to Burnside?”

“Allegedly. As I said, he does not leave his residence. All transactions are conducted via secure server, and anonymous accounts.” He shrugged. “The money clears, that has always been the primary consideration.”

“Not if you offered up a client for payment.” Guerda’s reputation secured his safety in all of his negotiations. Unlike Klaue, Guerda was not certifiable. If word got out that he’d sold out a client, he might find himself hunted with the weapons he procured for them in the first place. Loyalty was the greatest currency in their world.

“I am offering him to the Black Widow. I don’t expect it will be a problem for me, for long.” He raised his brows as if daring her to dispute it.

She shrugged, because it was a reasonable assumption.

“Then that concludes our business?” This time it was definitely a question.

Natasha shifted in her seat, uncrossing then recrossing her legs. The act was deliberate and revealed the gun in her lap with the suppressor already locked into place. He studied her.

“What else do you require?” Keep control of the conversation, and presume he maintained the discretion to provide what she wanted at his leisure.

“Eighteen months ago, Ulysses Klaue came into possession of a large amount of vibranium…”

“That vibranium was taken by the one known as Ultron, but I am sure you know this since you were involved in the Sokovia disaster.”

“Yes,” she conceded when he neatly walked into the trap. “But that was not all the vibranium Klaue acquired—you took a twenty percent cut before Ultron arrived to buy the rest.”

Guerda stilled. She could almost see the argument playing out in his head. He could deny it, risking the fact she may already have confirmed the knowledge. He had further implicated himself by admitting he knew about Ultron’s “theft” though he’d filled Klaue’s back account with significant funds. Klaue himself had not advertised the incident, or the loss of so many of his men—not to mention his arm. Or he could confirm it, and admit that he was in possession of contraband that usually got the bearers killed.

The weight of his calculation seemed to flicker in the air around him. Finally, he went a more direct route. “What about it?”

“Is it still in your possession?”

“If it is?” Here he pushed back a little, challenging her. The fact she hadn’t shot him where he stood and brought his son back seemed to give him a little more confidence.

“Is it all of it?”

He glanced at his glass, and then took another drink. “I have not sold any such materials, if that is what you are asking.” The careful phrasing wasn’t lost on her.

“No price is too high for your son, correct?”

“You want the vibranium.”

She didn’t say it. She didn’t have to.

“I am taking out my phone,” he told her, then reached into his pocket and drew out the device. “If I were to have any such material, I would never want it to reach a port, never settle in any one location. I would keep it on the move.” He typed something on the screen then turned it to face her.

A series of numbers appeared.

“I would keep it out to sea—for always.”

A transponder frequency number.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Signorina Romanova?”

Unscrewing the suppressor from the muzzle of the weapon, she rose. To his credit, the man didn’t flinch. After putting the suppressor in her pocket, she slipped the weapon into a small holster on the back of her belt. “Increase your son’s security.”

“I intend to…”

“…and get him therapy.”

His frown deepened and he pushed away from the bar and was two steps closer to her before he caught himself. “What did they do to him?”

“They kidnapped him, Signor Guerda. They took him from somewhere he felt safe, locked him in a room, and treated him with cold disdain and threats.” That was a world she was intimately familiar with. “They took every ounce of power from him, left him exposed and terrified but even if he wanted to give in to the terror, he didn’t dare because the threat of them was so much worse. The one person in the world he needed desperately was not there, and he couldn’t reach him no matter how many tears he shed.”

With every word she chipped away at the polished veneer until only the agonized father was left. His attempt to control the situation vanished.

“He will be in pain for a long time. He will need constant reassurance, and he needs to know it’s not his fault. They didn’t harm him physically. He is a little malnourished, and he needs rest to recover his strength. But it will be longer before he recovers his smile, and longer still before he recovers his sense of security. You will take care of him, see to his needs, understand that he will need to be told and shown how valuable to you he is as a person often. Do you understand?”

The last was important because while she accepted that Guerda cared, if he couldn’t do this for Mateo, she would take the child somewhere he could find it.

“I will do _anything_ for my son—even betray the most deadly woman in the world.”

At that, Natasha smiled. “I know—it’s why I brought him back to you.”

The sag in his shoulders and the sob that broke from his throat bared his soul to her. “And I can never repay that—Black Widow. I can never repay you for this.”

“You honored your payment terms.” Not that she would have punished him if that, too, had also proven part of the bait. She wouldn’t have because of Mateo. Children deserved to be cared for as fiercely aa the man in front of her did for his son. They deserved to know someone would burn the world down for them.

But…she should make one thing very clear.

“Lose my number, Signor Guerda. If I ever hear from you again, it better be because your _son_ needs my assistance.” For Mateo, she would return. “Are we clear?”

He nodded slowly. “Crystal.” She waited until he turned to the bottle of rum before she slipped back into the shadows. There was a small door between the bookcases—it led to a private hallway with direct access to the kitchen, and the backdoor. A swift route out of his home.

She didn’t linger to hear his surprise at her disappearance. In the kitchen, she entered the code to clear the alarms for sixty seconds, then let herself out. The alarm would reengage. On its own.

There were men on the roof, and men around the perimeter. She avoided all of them, and slipped over the wall. The villa’s remote location added to the security, but also gave her plenty of space to make her way unmolested to a lightly used trail down to the beach.

She’d scouted it before returning Mateo to his home. The child had been so exhausted, but relieved to be home. She’d made him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—apparently a universal treat for children—and had one for herself before ushering him into a bath. Once she’d gotten the exhausted child into his pajamas, he’d been easy enough to tuck into bed.

The moon gave her enough light to navigate by, and she paused at the foot of the path to glance up at the stone wall surrounding the villa above. It was almost a mini castle, remote and barricaded. But the interior had been warm, and homey. There were many pictures of Mateo, and of the woman she supposed had to be his mother. Mateo had clung to her hand when she would have walked away, and he asked if she would be there when he woke.

“No, little one. Our journey together is over. You are home, and your papa will be here when you open your eyes.” She’d brushed the hair away from his head. “You will be safe.”

“I don’t want you to go.” There was a very real fear in his eyes.

Life might erode away his innocence, blunt the sharp edges of the boy as he became a man, but these shadows would linger. Kneeling, she’d pressed her forehead to his and whispered, “Mateo, when the dreams come—remember that I came to get you.” His eyes were wide as she spoke. “Remember every moment of me climbing through the window, of hiding you behind the mattresses, and that I carried you out of there. Nothing else that happened can touch you. Just those three things. I carried you out, and now you are home. Do you understand, little one?”

“You saved me.”

“You saved yourself, little one,” she corrected. “You unlocked the window. You ate, and slept, and made yourself small so they would overlook you. You saved yourself. I just gave you a ride home.”

His smile was genuine, and sweet. With small fingers, he brushed the ends of her hair. “I like the red.”

“Me too,” she grinned, then kissed his forehead. “Go to sleep Mateo, dream strong dreams. And remember—you are safe and your papa loves you _very_ much.”

Still staring at her with sleepy eyes, he gave her hair another gentle tug, then said, “ _Grazie, Angelo rossa_.”

“Buona notte, piccolo.”

She lingered until his eyes closed and his breathing evened. Then she went downstairs to wait for his father.

He hadn’t made her wait long.

On the beach, she found Nakia waiting for her. It shouldn’t have surprised her, their conversation on the drive and the ferry revealed enough to tell her Nakia was a spy. She had her own jobs, and tasks, but she helped people—even people like Natasha. “I have the frequency of the transponder of a freighter where your missing vibranium is located.”

The other woman smiled. “I’m impressed.”

“No you’re not,” she said, entering the numbers on the device Nakia handed to her. “You didn’t just happen upon that area or that incident.” Returning the device, she added, “But I owed you one for the ride. He had no problems parting with the information, but I would act upon it before he has second thoughts.”

A day—maybe two—would pass before he might consider it.

“What will you do?” Nakia asked as she glanced at the numbers briefly. A raft sat on the beach, they’d used it to ride in from the yacht moored a mile off shore. Where Nakia put her hands on one, Natasha hadn’t asked and she hadn’t cared. It made moving around simpler, and kept Mateo safe.

“What I always do,” she answered, because it was true. There was always another job.

“Do you need a ride back to the States?” So they were done pretending about who Natasha really was, and who she’d learned Nakia to be. The Wakandan woman made an interesting companion.

“I can make my own way.” She had no interest in owing her another favor. After all, they’d only _just_ met.

“You could,” Nakia said agreeably. “Or…” She motioned and a vessel decloaked on the sand. It was similar to a quinjet in design, but much sleeker. A door opened, and another man stepped out—the wardog who’d delivered James to them in Switzerland.

The man gave her a small smile, and a nod. “Ms. Romanoff.”

“Wardog.” Because—she didn’t know his name.

His smile grew more teeth, and his face crinkled with amusement.

To Nakia she said, “What is it you wanted?” The wardog by the vessel made the situation tricky. Nakia was close enough to strike, and pin. The gun under Natasha’s jacket gave her the option of distance. Yet, she left herself vulnerable to the wardog taking a shot. While she didn’t know Nakia’s capabilities, only a fool would determine her not a threat. The woman moved with the confidence of training and familiarity with her own body.

It would be tricky, yes. Not impossible though.

“Nothing. It is what you are owed.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “Owed?” Of course, Nakia and the wardog hadn’t needed to reveal his presence. The act suggested it was a show of good faith.

Holding out a device, Nakia activated it and miniature hologram appeared—of T’Challa. “Ms. Romanoff…” It was a communicator.

“Your Majesty,” she said, inclining her head politely. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him since Leipzig—after dropping him with the stingers from her Widow's Bites. There had been a deadly intensity about him as he’d returned to his feet again and again. The promise of retribution lingered in the back of her mind as she met what she once would have termed a compassionate, if a little lost, gaze after Geneva. But there was something else in his eyes as he regarded her.

“You turn up in the most interesting of places, Ms. Romanoff.” He seemed to be inspecting her appearance. The swollen cheek was a dead giveaway, so she didn’t bother to disassemble nor did she relax her vigilance where Nakia and the wardog were concerned. “Nakia tells me you were rescuing a child?”

“If that was what she said.” Two could play this game. She only needed to figure out the angle.

T’Challa smiled slightly. “Nakia—if you would?”

“Of course,” Nakia murmured, then held out the device. “He wishes to speak to you in private.”

She would have handled a bomb with similar care, once she had the small device in hand, Nakia nodded to her and then headed toward the ship and the wardog. Natasha gave it a beat, then glanced at the king’s hologram. “You wanted a moment?”

“Yes…I owe you a great debt,” he told her bluntly. “You interfered at the airport, you let Barnes and the captain escape.”

She was aware.

“Initially, I was—angry with you.”

Also a very polite way of saying he seemed to wrestle with the idea of ripping her throat out.

“Yet—it was that act that allowed me to learn the truth. The truth that Zemo had set up Barnes, that he had controlled all of us and in our anger and pain, we allowed our grief to control us.”

Natasha nodded. “Yes.” She was not guiltless in the situation.

“In my frustration with your choice, I turned you in to Ross. I have—learned much since then about what a bad decision that was. But beyond that, you prevented me from executing a blameless man in my anger and grief. You, Ms. Romanoff, risked much to save them, and it seems, to save me.”

She didn’t shrug, it might be rude. But she didn’t need this explanation. She was there. She knew what happened. “You paid your debt. You took Barnes in, and repaired his arm—helped him with his head.” He wasn’t one hundred percent, James might never be. But he was better and it was thanks to T’Challa and his sister. As far as she was concerned, the debt was paid.

“You misunderstand me, Ms. Romanoff,” T’Challa chided her in an almost gentle voice. There was something different about him—changed—since Geneva and Leipzig. Yes, he’d lost his father and the quiet fury and need for vengeance once cloaking him was absent. But it was more than that—maybe it was being king. “Yes, my debt to Barnes is paid because my pursuit of him cost him so much—but that pursuit also cost you, and your choices saved me even when mine damned you.”

This time Natasha did shrug. “I was damned a long time ago, Your Majesty. Don’t trouble yourself.”

His smile faltered and his expression turned stern. “I pay my debts, Ms. Romanoff. I would think you of all people would understand that.”

“I do—I just don’t think you owe me a debt.”

“You are allowed to your opinion, as I am to mine.” He exhaled and for a moment, she thought he’d leaned back in a chair. Maybe he had. The image didn’t give her a lot to work with besides his upper body and face. When he steepled his fingers together, though, he demonstrated her theory had to be close. “Ms. Romanoff…I am a member of the committee. I am very well aware of what Secretary Ross did to you and attempted to have you do.”

She said nothing.

“You were put into that position…”

“By me,” she informed him. “I chose to do it. Just as I chose to let Cap and Barnes go in Leipzig. Just as I chose to attend the Accords in Geneva. Just as I chose to recruit you to help us find them.” The distinction was important. “I did not have to do these things, they were necessary. Ross is no longer involved with the committee and has revealed his true face. That was the mark of a job done well. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“Fine,” T’Challa said, though his tone suggested otherwise. “I accept your premise, even if I would dispute it. Your current status is due in no large part to my regrettable actions.”

Natasha smiled. “Don’t trouble yourself, Your Majesty. There was a target on my back a long time before that, they only needed an excuse.”

“Which I provided…”

“Do you need me to forgive you?” She was tired and wanted to complete the transaction, change, slip on her veil, and return to the States. She hadn’t turned her phone on in nearly forty-eight hours. She still didn’t know Steve’s status but the news wasn’t reporting a dead Captain America and she was pretty damn sure that would make it to Europe.

Even the thought punched a fist into her chest.

“You are a very difficult woman.” At least he sounded like he admired it.

“So I’ve been told,” she admitted, and smiled. “By a few people.”

“Then I shall count myself in their glad company. I suspect you do not wish my assistance on this, but the wardog is there because I sent him after Nakia informed me of your presence. He can escort you to the States, and get you in without passing through security or anywhere else you would prefer to go. He can bring you to Wakanda if you wish—you are welcome here. Or he can leave you to go about your business. Whatever you choose, please understand that I do owe you a debt. You do not have to collect upon it as is your wish, but I owe it to you.”

“You are very kind, your majesty. I appreciate the gesture, I do. I have discovered the location of Klaue’s remaining vibranium and given it to Nakia. She provided me with transport to get a young boy out of Morocco and home to his father. I feel these are equitable exchanges, and I am satisfied with it at the moment.”

Everything was a transaction. It made settling up simpler, and avoided the complications of fighting with one you might owe something to.

“As you wish, Ms. Romanoff.” Though she seemed to have disappointed him in some way. “Until next time…”

“Until next time.”

Then the hologram vanished and she met Nakia halfway to return the device to her.

“You will not be joining us,” Nakia stated as if expecting that answer.

“No,” Natasha told her. “I appreciate the offer, but I prefer to do it on my own.” And she was not confirming her destination to anyone. Nothing could point back at the guys, no matter how well-intentioned T’Challa’s offer was.

“You know, I’d heard of you before,” Nakia told her. “You broke the ring in the Sudan, the one shipping girls to the Ukraine.”

“Two years ago,” Natasha confirmed. “Lucky happenstance.”

“And the one operating out of Thailand before that.” Nakia raised her eyebrows.

“Right place, right time.”

A smirk creased Nakia’s lips. “South Korea?”

“Vacation.”

“Chechnya?”

“Shopping.”

The other woman laughed. “We should get together for a girls’ weekend…I can think of a few places to go shopping.”

“Maybe,” Natasha told her, and then glanced at the water.

“There is a car parked just on the other side of the hill there,” Nakia nodded to the where the beach rose toward the road. “It’s not much, an older model. No electronics to speak of.”

The car was clean.

She gave the other woman a slight smile. “About the shopping weekend? Call me—if I’m free, I’ll show up.”

Nakia inclined her head. “Same. Safe travels to you, Natasha.”

“And to you.”

 

Two hours later, she inspected her appearance in the mirror. She’d cleared security at the Malaga airport, and her flight to New York left soon. The subtle changes to the mask hid the swelling on her face. The scarf around her neck disguised the bruises, and the wig kept her red hair hidden neatly. She was a cool ice blonde with a Norwegian passport on her way to New York for business.

Nadja Rasmussen was a workaholic. She bucked social trends by not relaxing on weekends, and often took advantage of her co-workers downtime to advance her own career. The payoff waited for her in New York, an interview with a Fortune 500 company that had scouted her. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, one she’d made happen. Slipping her slender glasses into place, she strolled out of the bathroom with her carryon luggage and made her way to the gate.

Once seated, she turned on her phones one at a time. A single message awaited her on the Toronto museum job. The curator had given her the all clear to make arrangements. He’d also included the contact information for the thieves—an email. That was pedestrian.

She sent him a single word response.

_Acknowledged._

Then she turned the phone off.

The second phone had three messages from a burner number. Faces, names, and addresses. So they’d narrowed their search. Good to know.

Shutting it off, she glanced at the time. They would be boarding within the hour, so she indulged herself and turned on her own phone. Steady breaths kept her pulse within the right range.

The messages bouncing to fill the screen gave her phone the shakes.

 

 **James:** _Took all night, but got him cleared. Heading back to the Tower._

Relief flooded her, though Nadja could not let any of it show. Steve was okay. She’d known it—assumed really—but confirmation steadied her.

 **James:** _Checking._

 **James:** _Had a bad dream—Cuba. 1963. You were bleeding out. Do you remember this?_

Her chest squeezed. Cuba. Had she been in Cuba? The year didn’t mean anything. The missile crisis was in ’62.

 **James:** _Can’t sleep. Steve on mission—_ again. _Checking._

The messages were intermittent. The last one dug a gouge in her.

 **James:** _Safe? Pardon happening._

They came through for him. A smile tried to force its way onto Nadja’s face, but she kept it in reserve. Steve was safe, and James was about to be safe from prosecution or incarceration.

Wonderful news.

The ones from Steve were similar in tone, if not content.

 **Steve:** _Safe at Tower. Check in, will you?_

His message was an hour after James’ first. So after they got back.

 **Steve:** _Buck can’t sleep. Bad one tonight. He’s pacing. Won’t talk to me._

The Cuban dream, if she’d been injured—was that just his subconscious worrying about her or had it happened?

 **Steve:** _Had another call out—no sludge this time. Just robots. Lots and lots of robots. Broke my hand. It’s already healing. Missed having you there._

Robots? He broke his hand and all he said was robots?

 **Steve:** _Tony talked to me…about the date thing. Hell Angel, I don’t even know what to say except Peggy told me once I didn’t know a damn thing about women. She’s right. Call as soon as you can, okay?_

She didn’t know what to say either and she’d had two days to consciously _not_ think about it.

 **Steve:** _Miss you. We both do._

That message had been sent ten hours before and nothing since then. Maybe he’d gotten called to a new mission?

 **Clint:** _Look…_

Included with the message was a picture of the kids. All three of them, and Nadja’s professional veneer slipped as Natasha smiled. They looked great.

 **Clint:** _Nate’s_ walking!!!! _Well penguin waddling but it’s right there._

 **Clint:** _Coop’s got skillz at Mario Kart. I think he can take you._

Then the messages were rapid fire.

 **Clint:** _Lila’s pageant is daffodils. She said she picked it because of you. Misses you._

 **Clint** _: Vision and kids. Who knew?_

The picture with that one was Vision leaning over a table next to Lila and Coop, coloring very carefully with a crayon on a picture of a… she had to squint to see it…mermaid. He was coloring a mermaid.

Yeah. She was with Clint on that one, who knew?

 **Clint** : _Come out of the hole. Now. You haven’t answered me days._

The last message stilled her.

 **Clint:** _So…those assholes just deigned to tell me you’re off on a job. WTF? I changed my mind. I don’t approve of any of them. Call. Me._

The anger simmering in every syllable seemed visible in the message. It didn’t take much imagination to hear his voice, or the cool cutting in his tone. He was pissed. A new incoming message flashed across the screen.

 **Tony:** ETA Red?

Just that, nothing else—it had taken him less than five minutes to notice her phone was on. Friday had to have been watching for it. Though she was still wearing the bracelet, she hadn’t activated it.

Flipping back to James’ messages, she sent:

**_Safe. Pardon is great news! :D :D On my way. :* See you soon._ **

To Steve’s she answered:

**_Missed you. Glad you’re safe. :D Was worried. :* On my way._ **

She hesitated a moment, then added a last word.

**_Partner._ **

That word meant a lot, maybe more than he realized. But she knew, and she hoped he could understand it.

Clint’s messages were next.

**_Kids look great. Glad they take after Laura. She has a better nose. Miss you, too._ **

 

The screen lit up again.

 **Tony:** _Really Red? E. T. fucking A.?_

The corners of her mouth twitched.

**_Patience shellhead. Boarding in 45. Land in 8.5 after that._ **

**Steve:** _Partners. You okay?_

**_Tired. Job done._ **

**Steve:** _Good. Soon?_

**_A few hours. Long flight._ **

**Steve:** _Need a ride?_

**_I wish. Will txt when I land._ **

She did, it would mean she got to see Steve sooner. Yes, his words and mistrust had hurt, but she still missed him. Still wanted to see him. But Captain America was _noticeable_ and they couldn’t afford him being linked to her. Not even tangentially at the moment.

 **Steve:** _Will be here._

She knew he meant it, but if the Avengers got called.

 **Steve:** _Wanda is coming back._

**_Really? Is it safe?_ **

She and Steve had been listed as special cases before—before Ross. Before the committee threw up its hands.

 **Steve:** _Yes. Will tell you all when you’re home._

Home.

**Tony:** _Will send a car to pick you. Name?_

**_You don’t have to._ **

**Tony:** _Name?_

Lips quirking, Nadja shook her head. She was heading to the states to interview for a job she’d been recruited for. It could be SI—that fit the cover with only very minor adjustments. Stark Industries would definitely provide a car for recruited executives.

**_Nadja Rasmussen._ **

**Clint** : _Where?_

**_Just a job. It’s done._ **

**Clint:** _No backup?_

**_Didn’t need it._ **

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint: _…_**

The messages started and stopped several times without actually being sent through.

**_Remember Casablanca? 2003?_ **

A definite lull then:

 **Clint:** _Why?_

**_First time I realized you cared._ **

**Clint** : _Cause you’re an idiot._

**_:D_ **

**Clint:** _First time you scared years off my life._

This time she didn’t even try to fight the smile.

**_Cause you’re an idiot._ **

**Clint:** _Home soon?_

**_Soon. Laura?_ **

**Clint:** _She’s great. Misses you._

Nat missed her, too.

**_Give her a kiss for me? Then slip her one for you?_ **

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint: _…_**

**Clint:** _You know I can’t._

**_I know you care. Does she?_ **

**Clint:** _It’s not enough._

**_Fine, then just give her one from me, but make sure there’s tongue._ **

The middle finger emoji buoyed her.

 

 **James:** _When?_

**_A few hours—morning time. Long flight._ **

**James:** _I’ll wait up._

**_Have you slept at all?_ **

**James:** _No._

She hadn’t really managed much sleep either.

**_Sleep in my room?_ **

**James:** _There now._

 **James:** _Still mad?_

**_Wasn’t mad._ **

A pause.

 **James:** _Still hurt?_

She could smooth it over. Make light of it. But she didn’t want to lie. She’d spent two days just not thinking about it. Focused on the mission. The sting was still there. The fact they didn’t trust her. No matter how justified, it hurt.

**_Working on it._ **

**James:** _Can I help?_

**_Stay safe—take care of you._ **

**James:** _I’d rather take care of you._

**_And I need you to take care of you._ **

**James:** _Stevie said you’re stubborn._

**Steve** _: What I said was he needed to listen to you, because you’re stubborn._

**James:** _He misses you._

**Steve:** _He’s not eating much either._

**James:** _Neither is Steve. And he’s avoiding Sam now. Not that I mind that part._

**Steve:** _Tony called down, said he was sending a car for you. And I’m not avoiding Sam. I’ve been here looking after you, jerk._

**James _:_** _He’s a punk._

 

Nat shook her head, then created a message thread for both of them

 

**_You both need to eat. If you’re not sleeping, sleep. I’ll be back in eleven—maybe twelve hours depending on traffic. Stop ratting each other out, or you can both sleep alone when I get back._ **

That might have been a hollow threat. A part of her longed to be curled up in between them, safe, warm, and sleepy—kind of like they’d been the day after she’d met Peter—before Tony came in all hot about Beaumont. That had been really nice.

Really nice.

 **James:** _Scary._

 **Steve:** _Yes ma’am. I’ll take care of it._

 **James** _: I’m used to looking after him._

 

Shaking her head, she didn’t roll her eyes, but she certainly thought about it. There was something unsettling about the revelation that they weren’t really sleeping or eating when she wasn’t there. That—wasn’t good for them. They both needed to do better about taking care of themselves. Reality told her she wouldn’t always be there. Hell, her history with James told her that.

Her phone buzzed again.

 

 **Tony:** _You look tired._

Casually, she glanced toward one of the monitoring cameras—they were everywhere in an airport and she adjusted her glasses with her middle finger.

 **Tony:** _Classy._

 

Idiots.

All of them.

 

To each one she sent:

**_Boarding soon. Turning off phone._ **

 

Thankfully, they started asking for passengers to queue up. When Nadja Rasmussen was paged, she frowned but made her way to the counter where the agent informed her that her ticket had been upgraded—she would be flying first class. Casting a covert look at the camera on the ceiling just behind the agent, she mouthed thank you.

Impossible idiots.

Thankfully, her first class berth put her square against the bulkhead—no one was behind her. Even with the upgraded accommodation, all she managed was to relax and watched a couple of movies in more comfort than she would have had in coach.

At least she had the view of the sunrise lighting the wings from behind them. A reminder that just because she couldn’t see it, didn’t mean they didn’t happen.

Maybe she shouldn’t have booked for New York. Maybe she should have headed down south for Beaumont’s job and gotten a good look inside Roxxon while she was there. After the close call Steve had, she didn’t care to let that one linger much longer. No, she’d be back at the Tower soon. Then she could check on the guys personally, Clint, and Peter too—then start the next jobs.

Jobs reminded her of the Watchdogs—they were in New Orleans. Burnside was in Virginia. Roxxon. Helcion Alchemical. The committee. T’Challa’s offer. Nakia’s suggestion. Little Mateo. Cuba. Her memories. James' memories. Steve's plans. Tony's drinking. Clint's healing. Peter's training.

And Nick.

She had a lot of work to do. Since sleep remained elusive, she ordered a drink and pulled out her laptop. Maybe she could figure out one of those puzzles before they landed.

Maybe.


	17. Trajectory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guys are counting down the hours...

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Trajectory**

**Bucky**

 

The silence dragged out between them after her last message. She was boarding her flight and she was turning her phone off. Spain. Stark said she was in Spain. Not only had she disappeared to do the job, she’d been halfway around the world. Bucky had a thousand questions, and the restlessness consuming him since getting Steve back to the Tower threatened to drive him mad.

“Gym?” He bounced to his feet. Neither of them had even bothered to get ready for bed. Sleep had been elusive as hell without her there. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a hundred things that could go wrong.

The worst of it?

He didn’t think they were his imagination.

“Run first?” Steve gathered up the plates of sandwiches he’d made and they’d both systematically demolished. Bucky had barely tasted the food, but he’d eaten regardless. He had to wonder if that taut, stretched out feeling in his gut was why Natalia couldn't eat sometimes. 

If they went out for a run, it would probably amp him up more. Too many angles to watch, and Steve didn’t run with his shield, which meant he’d be exposed. At the same time, the thought of _moving_ even without a genuine destination held some appeal.

“Yes.” With a nod, they split up long enough for Steve to grab his shoes, and Bucky to slide on a hoodie, and weapons. The ride in the elevator to the ground floor was near silent until…

“Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes,” Friday stated quietly. “Boss said to tell you her flight has taken off securely, I am monitoring and will send an alert when it lands.”

“Eight and a half hours?” Steve asked, checking his watch.

“Yes,” she stated.

That put her in around eight-thirty or nine in the morning.

“Thank you, Friday,” Bucky told her and barely heard her polite welcome before the doors opened to the level below the lobby. There was a private exit they could use to come up on the street level. Not that they couldn’t get past security in the lobby, but it seemed Steve enjoyed fading into the background when he could and Bucky would never be comfortable with the spotlight.

While New York never slept, a hush lay over the streets. Two steps out of the Tower, and Steve nodded toward the park. “Ready?”

“Move your ass,” Bucky told him, then jogged ahead in a sudden burst of speed. The feeling of his feet hitting the ground amped his pulse. It didn’t take Steve long to catch him. They hadn’t raced yet, and despite the fact he’d gotten faster after his time in Zola’s clutches, he’d never demonstrated it where Steve could see it during the war.

It had been his secret. Sometimes, he thought it might have been shame that kept him quiet. Looking back, he suspected it had been fear. Like his mind knew something dark had happened, and something darker still could—but shielded him from the truth.

Or maybe they’d simply taken that truth from him, too.

They reached the park in no time. Traffic muted behind the walls, and beneath the trees hiding the moon above. He hadn’t told Steve because frankly whatever the hell had happened to him had been horrible. They’d burned him inside and out. He’d thought he was going to die.

Fuck, he’d hoped he would.

Then the last person on Earth he’d ever expected to see had come for him. His best friend, the punk he’d left behind to be safe in the states, transformed into—well whatever they’d done to him, too. He’d never been more furious or more grateful for Steve, and that conflict of emotions summed up their relationship until the day Bucky fell off the train.

Thoughts whirling, he pushed himself to go faster. He wanted the burn in his chest, and in his legs. The mad sprint sent him weaving through the trees. He clutched her tighter against him, trusting her legs to keep her locked in place because he needed his gun hand free. But she was bracing her arm against his shoulder, the steady, surefire pop-pop-pop of the handgun she wielded picking off their pursuers.

They just had to get to the wall. That was the first goal. The mission had gone awry. They had been betrayed. He’d broken all protocol to get her out. Her safety had been a secondary parameter—a surprise given Karpov’s obsession with her, but Karpov had not been giving the orders.

The Soldier didn’t give a damn. After he’d stormed inside, taking out the guards on his way—he’d found her bound, abused, beaten, and bleeding. Her hollow eyes revealed a grim truth and he understood the price their superiors had paid for the chance to take out the traitor.

Natalia.

He left no survivors in that room.

None.

Their current pursuers needed to abandon the chase, or he would leave none of them alive, either. Another pop and the smell of cordite wreathed that of Natalia’s blood as he raced onward.

“Yo…Buck…” Steve’s voice dragged him from the past and Bucky nearly stumbled at the shift in his center of gravity. The split between the present—running in Central Park with Steve—and the past—carrying Natalia to safety as she picked off their enemies—collided roughly.

“What?” It came out more of a snap, and the Soldier stiffened beneath his skin. He opened and closed his hands, there should be a heavy weapon in one, and Natalia in the other.

“Easy.” Catching his shoulder, Steve grounded him with a light grip. “Slow it down.”

He slowed, his breath coming in measured, if deeper pants as he attempted to get his breathing under control. They were…it took him a minute to scan their surroundings as they stopped. Belvedere Castle was in sight.

“You with me?” Steve asked when Bucky twisted to find him watching him, hands on his hips.

“Yeah,” he answered, then he surveyed the area again. Reconciling then with now, he had to accept Natalia was then, while now she was on a plane somewhere.

“Good…”

“What did I do?” His memory slipped a little. They’d left the Tower and headed toward the park at a run and then…

“Ran like hell,” Steve told him, still getting his breath and even Bucky’s chest felt the pull with every harsh breath he took. “Like we did in Italy, when we were outrunning the base explosion.”

When they ran with zero intention of stopping. They had to get clear. They had to get Natalia clear. His lungs had burned similarly then.

“We were running,” he told him. “I was—” Turning away from Belvedere Castle, he angled back toward the lake. He kept his gaze on a swivel, the separation between then and now was far too thin. “We were in Yugoslavia—Tito’s government broke with Stalin the late 40s, but by the mid-50s, there was a movement to bring them back into line. A high-ranking member of Stalin’s cabinet was negotiating with Yugoslavia, carrying secrets—we were sent in—Natalia to identify them, and me to kill them. The mission priority was that assassination.”

Steve moved in lockstep with him. “What happened?”

“Natalia was discovered—betrayed. The target was a former Red Room asset. He recognized her…set a trap.” The Soldier seethed under his skin. “The mission priority said to leave her behind, and continue to the objective. Her safety was a secondary concern.”

He wanted to vomit.

“You didn’t leave her behind.” The absolute confidence in Steve’s voice pulled him away from the turbulence. “I know you didn’t.”

Bucky stopped altogether, then faced him. “I went in—killed every man between me and the room where she was held. They’d beaten her Steve—stabbed her—hurt her. And she never made a sound. The look in her eyes when she saw me, the sudden smile and surprise.” The gorge rose up, and he had to swallow. “I killed them. All of them, and I wasn’t quiet about it.”

Seven men, some in pieces, lay scattered around them when he snapped the shackles off her wrists and pulled her out of that chair. He dragged a jacket off one of the men, and pulled it over her bare arms, then looped a belt around her middle. They hadn’t left much of her clothes.

“She asked me if I got him—”

_“Kovac,” she choked out his name, her voice raw. There was a ring of black around her throat. They’d strangled her and it had left her voice a husky rasp. “He is the target. I marked him for you.”_

_Yes, the Soldier had seen the man through his scope. But then they’d come for her._

_“Not yet,” he told her, fastening the belt then looking at the men around them—those who hadn’t bled as much. He pulled the pants off one then used his knife to cut them to length, after he dragged them on her legs, he readjusted the belt. She was so tiny compared to these men._

_“That’s the mission,” she’d muttered, staring at him. “You have to Soldat, you have to get him. They will punish you…”_

_“Hush,” he’d ordered, and then cupped her battered cheek. “We will.” Then he helped her stand, but she staggered. Her knee was twisted and pain flickered across her eyes. He relocated the embattled kneecap, and she’d paled to a ghostly white beneath the blood. “Can you grip me?” Dragging her upward, he settled her against his chest. The body armor he wore would protect his back, but she was too vulnerable and his armor wouldn’t fit her._

_Her thighs locked to his hips, and he ignored the surge in his system at the press of her. He couldn’t_ feel _her, yet he was consumed by the awareness of her._

_“Yes,” she told him._

_“Hold on,” he ordered, then braced his arm beneath her ass. It would stabilize her. He handed her a pistol, before gripping his own in his right hand. Natalia was trained to use both hands, which was good. They’d broken her right, so she gripped the gun with her left. “Kill anyone who pursues.”_

_Kovac had left the building. The route away from the house was a long, winding mountainous road._

_“Soldat—I’m going to slow you down.”_

_“Silence, Widow.” The order shut her up. “Do you understand your task?”_

_“Yes,” she rasped._

_“Do not fail me.” Then the Soldier carried her as he ran. There were faster ways to the lower slopes, all of them through the trees. He’d left weapons stowed at the foot of the mountain before ascending to get into position. They had time._

_All he had to do was get to the weapons’ cache before Kovac’s car reached the lower road._

_The first shots behind them went wide, and struck the trees. Bark exploded to cut at his cheek. He ignored it._

_Natalia fired._

_Their pursuers fell._

_The run required every ounce of his oxygen and skill to avoid collisions, adjust for the incline, and to keep her steady and safe. The scent of her blood clogged his nostrils, and the bruises on her throat spurred him to go faster. The last thousand meters blew past as he weaved through the trees. Natalia clung to him, but her arm never dipped. She had his back, and he trusted her with it._

_When he reached the cache, he lowered her carefully. Aware of the blood seeping through the stolen jacket he’d wrapped around her. He took the gun from her hand, then pressed her hand against the wound. “Pressure. Keep it there.” Then he’d reloaded and stowed the pistol within reach before removing another pair of weapons from the bag._

_“Stay.”_

_Then he continued onto the road itself. The rumbling of the car’s engine promised him swift vengeance. The man was a mission, the Soldier told himself. But that was convenient. After his betrayal—the Soldier would have tracked him to wherever he slithered away._

_He stood in the center of the narrow road. The moment the car came into view, he sighted the driver. Two bullets._

_The vehicle wrenched to the side and crashed into a tree. He approached, shooting the guard who tried to climb out of the front passenger seat. Then the guard who emerged from the backseat stumbling, trying to cover the target. The target let out a low, bleating yell, and then tried to run. The Soldier caught him easily—the man staggered to the ground._

_“I have money…” He began._

_The Soldier didn’t care._

_“I can give you whatever you want…”_

_The only thing he wanted was behind him._

_“I can—tell me. Anything. I will make it happen.” The target was on his knees. The mission was to silence him and also to send a message._

_The Soldier secured his guns. And the target nearly sagged with relief. Then he pulled out a knife and the Soldier smelled the urine before he saw it._

_“Please…please…what can I do?”_

_“You can die,” he told him. “Eventually.” For now, the Soldier would exact the pound of flesh the mission required, but he didn’t do it for the mission._

_He did it for Natalia._

“I took him apart,” Bucky finished, staring out at the water. “Piece by piece. I broke every part of him I’d seen hurt on her. And I made sure he didn’t die quick. It took him a long time, and I’m pretty sure his mind snapped before his body.”

He didn’t dare look at Steve, the images playing out like some old time film in his head.

“Once I was done, I went back. She’d already stitched the wound on her side closed, and she had re-armed herself. She looked me right in the eye and said, _Gotovo_? _”_ Now he looked at Steve and swallowed. “Is it done? It was the only thing she asked me and when I nodded, she said good. That was it. She never talked about what happened. Or what we had to do. I carried her out of there. Even when she would have forced her shredded and bruised body to walk on that injured knee, I carried her. We never talked about it again.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked after a protracted silence.

“Yes,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember—I know her. I know me. It was done. They _hurt_ her and I _hurt_ him. And that was enough for us. I had taken that for her and it was all we were going to get.”

“What happened when your handlers found out?”

“They didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s not when they took her away from me.” The cold reality of it was he’d put her ahead of the mission from the beginning. They didn’t take her away until far later.

Steve squeezed his shoulder. “You got her out Buck.”

“Not fast enough.” God he hoped she didn’t remember that. It made him sick to remember it.

“You got her out,” Steve repeated. “She’s still here. She’s alive.”

“She’s coming home.”

“Yes, she is.”

They stared over the darkened water. “I hate that she was out there alone.”

“Buck, she’s been running alone for years.” There was a kind of sad resignation in his voice. “I was in the ice…and so were you. And she’s been out here.”

“That just makes it worse, Stevie.” Worse, because he should have been with her. The scattered pieces of their past littered the last few decades like a spare few breadcrumbs abandoned by the ravens. “She shouldn’t _have_ to be alone.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” Steve said slowly, his tone thoughtful. “I don’t think she knows how not to be. It’s why she expects us to mistrust her—why she expects everyone to, because the only person she knows that looks out for her, is her.”

“And Barton.” Bitterness bubbled to the surface. Her trust in Barton was absolute—and that should have been him. Bucky—the Soldier—had been with her for decades. He’d had her back and she him. Barton had taken his place after they’d excised him from her memory.

“Can’t resent him.” His best friend gave his shoulder a last squeeze before letting him go. “We can’t. He was there for her. Before Tony. Before me. Before you coming back. He was there. We wouldn’t have her now without him.”

“It should have been me,” he said. Even Stark had begun to fill in a place that should have been his. A safe place to retreat to, someone to tease and laugh with. “I’m never not going to regret she was left alone.”

“You know you were left alone, too.” The reminder didn’t change anything for him.

“I didn’t care though—I didn’t know what I was missing.” Then he faced Steve. “And I would have gladly suffer a thousand times worse if I knew it meant she was safe.”

“You love her.” It wasn’t a question, then Steve grinned. “You love her Buck. I get that.”

“I don’t know if it is that simple,” he said slowly, turning the idea over in his head. “I was the asset. I wasn’t supposed to want anything. I had the mission. The mission was everything.”

“But you made her the mission.” That sounded right. “It’s what you said once, that you saved her that day of her graduation because Karpov wanted her for something, so you made saving her the mission.”

He nodded once.

“This might be a stupid question, but we know they were trying to wipe her…”

Bucky’s hand clenched. He couldn’t _stand_ the idea of her being in that chair.

“…were they wiping you at the same time?”

“I don’t know. I know Pierce did it often—every time I came out of the ice, and sometimes more in between. I think so…but I don’t know.”

“Well you want to know what I know?”

He waited, because Steve would tell him—teasing remark or not.

“I know whatever they did, they couldn’t take her all the way away—you remembered her.”

“Not in Odessa…” He’d shot her.

“Yes you did. You didn’t kill her, remember? The Winter Soldier didn’t miss. He wasn’t allowed to miss. You justified it as she wasn’t the target, just collateral. But how often did you leave collateral behind?”

Not very.

If ever.

Even when he’d taken out Fury in Steve’s apartment. His orders had been eliminate Fury and disappear. It was why he hadn’t fought back when Steve threw the shield at him.

On the bridge…his orders had been to kill Natalia. They hadn’t called her that. But it had been her. He’d gone after her and left the men assigned to his unit to deal with Sam and Steve. Still, he’d known her voice. He’d blown up a few cars that day—killed a cop, probably killed more than a few drivers. Considering the spray of bullets, there had likely been plenty of collateral.

They hadn’t mattered.

He’d had line of sight on her head. One shot and it would have been over.

“Thank you for stopping me on the street.”

“No problem,” Steve said with a grin. “Wasn’t going to let you kill her.”

That was good. Steve would never let him do that. Natalia wouldn’t let him kill Steve. Steve wouldn’t let him kill Natalia. Bucky wouldn’t let Natalia hurt Steve. They didn’t have to protect each other from Steve—he would never hurt them.

“Come on,” Steve gave him a nudge. “You ready to run some more?”

Bucky checked his watch. Six and a half more hours to go. “Yes. Then I want to spar.” He hadn’t been allowed to spar yet, not once since he’d woken in Wakanda. He’d worked out, he’d run, and he’d broken a few speed bags.

What he needed though was a serious challenge, to push himself.

“We can do that,” Steve grinned. “I’m not Nat, but I can hold my own.”

“Really?” Bucky drawled. “Didn’t really notice that the last couple of times. Last one back has to cook.” Then he pushed off from Steve and ran. This time, his mind stayed on where he was, and who he was with. The gap between them closed easily, but Steve didn’t pull ahead until they were on the far side of the park and even then, they made another loop before diverting onto the sidewalk to head for the Tower.

 

With four hours left on the clock, they were in the training rooms. They’d both warmed up on the speed bags and now Steve circled him, not quite engaging. Instead, he seemed to look for a tell or a give on his part. It took Bucky about five minutes of this to realize why Natalia hadn’t hesitated at the chalet to launch into a flurry of strikes. Steve wasn’t going to throw the first punch.

They’d wrapped their hands, but Bucky had taken extra care with his left and Steve did his right. The broken hand had healed, but it was still tender. Bucky could and had broken bones on Steve before, and that wasn’t what this fight was about. Natalia did it open handed, spreading out the force and reducing the impact. It was about landing the blow, not injuring his opponent. He retreated a couple of steps, hands up in loose, open fists with his fingers only slightly curled.

 _C’mon Stevie…_ Bucky understood Steve’s reticence to start the fight. Didn’t matter that he was over six feet and had almost eighty-five pounds of bodyweight more than he had before the war. It was about who he saw himself as mentally. Steve didn’t win fights now because of his serum-enhanced strength; he won them because that scrawny kid didn’t know how to give up on a fight, never had. Never would.

A feint forward and Steve shifted his weight, keeping his circle tight as he mirrored Bucky’s posture. No, Steve was definitely not going to start the fight. Another feint-retreat combo, and when he went for it the third time, Steve stepped toward him rather than away as if expecting another feint. He slipped right under that guard and landed the first open handed blow to his chest and sent him staggering back a step.

Then it was on. He ducked Steve’s swing, and then Steve surprised him by catching him in the side in a twist, slap move that was straight out of Natalia’s playbook. The Soldier flexed. The follow up combination was an overhand swing to pull the attention away so the second hand could jab an uppercut. He flowed right into the maneuver, narrowly avoiding the overhand swing but catching the jab, and then he pulled Steve off center and threw him.

Rolling, Steve landed on his feet and stared at him. “You really did train her…”

Bucky grinned. “Yes.” Then they lunged toward each other. Steve was fast, and his blows hard and bracing, but Bucky was no slouch and while Steve didn’t have Nat’s finesse or experience, she’d drilled him enough that he responded to side attacks far differently from direct brawling. He used his legs more, and those kicks hurt like a bitch because he committed full force to the movement.

The second time he got that knee up toward Bucky’s chest, he gripped Steve’s thigh, and fell backwards and turned his center of gravity against him even as he flipped him over. Then riding the momentum of his speed and weight, followed to land on him, one arm against his throat and the other pinning Steve’s right arm to the ground.

“Fuck…” Steve exhaled, his eyes startled.

“Language,” Bucky corrected. “Yield?”

“Yeah,” he said easily, still shaking his head when Bucky hauled him to his feet.

“What did you do wrong?” The question flowed out of him, as automatic as breathing. Stevie overcommitted his hits, and that made him a little predictable in a longer fight.

“Um…” Steve raked a hand through his hair, pushing it away from his damp forehead as he walked over to the water. “Not really sure, you took the earlier one pretty well even if I knocked you off balance. Thought I’d go for a sweep if it took you off balance this time.”

“Not a bad plan,” Bucky told him before taking a long drink of his own. His longer hair was pulled back with an elastic, but some of the tendrils had broke free to stick to his face. That and he needed to shave. The clock said they still had three hours. That little run took an hour, not bad at all. “You’re used to fighting people without your stamina. A couple of hard hits, and they go down and you’re onto the next. You fight long enough—you rely on the same combinations. That makes you predictable. You don’t want to start the fight either, you hold back—forcing your opponent to put you in a corner and then you get your back up. Natalia’s taught you offense, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve admitted. “I’m just not a fan of hitting my friends.”

“Well if that’s what you call hitting, I can see why.” The dry insult had the desired effect. Steve’s eyes narrowed. God he was easy to rile up.

“You want to go again?”

“I think you better,” Bucky told him. “Cause I’m pretty sure what you were doing isn’t called fighting.”

Steve gave him the look—no matter his size, that look hadn’t change. The one that dared him to put his money where his mouth was.

“We call it losing, Stevie…” He was still grinning when Steve charged.

This round went about the same as the first, but Steve wasn’t holding back anymore. His speed increased and pushed Bucky to match him. Their blocks jarred each other, and he felt the open handed hits down to his bones. Still when he pinned Steve this time, they were both laughing.

“That should have worked,” Steve complained shoving him off.

“Yeah, for someone who doesn’t know you Punk,” Bucky chuckled as he rolled onto his back. “You love having your back to the wall, gives you nowhere else to go but the direction you want.”

“You gotta show me that last move—if you’d actually landed the hit, you’d have broken my arm.”

Bucky stared at the ceiling as he caught his breath. His body ached, but it was a good kind of pain. He’d been too lax lately, and he needed the rush. The fighting wasn’t triggering him, hell it was just fun. “It only works if you don’t care if it doesn’t work.”

“Like Nat’s flying thighs of death.”

Flying thighs of death.

Bucky laughed all over again. “Those always work.”

“Bullshit,” Steve exclaimed shoving himself off the floor. “I’ve seen you break out of it.”

“Gotta get your shoulder up before she locks it down, cause once she’s there, she’s not going anywhere.” He took Steve’s offered hand, and they leaned on each other over to the bench where the water waited. “But you also have to know it’s coming, and she’s fast.”

“Faster than me,” Steve admitted.

“Maybe,” Bucky murmured, considering it. “The thing is, Natalia doesn’t hesitate. You do.”

“Again, don’t want to hurt anyone.” He drained the water, then grabbed another, tossing a second to Bucky after he dropped the empty into the recycle bin. “But she’s got this—way of looking at the fight, three or four moves ahead, and she’s always moving.”

“She bruises like hell when you hit her, she does her best to not get hit. Harder to hit a moving target.” Pulling his attention away with the phone, setting him up to take a shot he was never going to get because she made him look one way while she attacked from the other. “Your style is different from Natalia’s—you’re the tank who kicks in the front door, she’s the stealth that drops from the ceiling.”

“And you’re the shadow no one sees coming.”

He couldn’t argue with the description. “We all have our strengths.”

“But you trained her to fight like she does and yet you can match me.”

Bucky shrugged. “Natalia’s training was very specific before I met her. Her slighter build, her narrower frame—she was all stealth, all precise slices and cuts. I’m a hammer. We both had to adjust.”

“I thought I was a hammer…”

Chuckling, Bucky shook his head. “You’re a battering ram.”

Steve rolled his head from side to side. “Fair…still want to learn that move.”

“I’ll show you—when the hand is done healing.” Make Steve faster? Sharper? Teach him to think a few steps ahead?

That was a win for all of them. Still wouldn’t stop him charging head first through a door. Or barreling into the other guys, but maybe they could still buy him a few seconds.

Two hours.

“Gonna hit the shower.” He wanted to shave, too. “Think we should make food?”

Steve followed him toward the elevator. “There was this little bakery in Vienna that Clint grabbed some stuff from. She loved it— _paczki_ I think it was called.”

“Those are like jellied doughnuts,” he told Steve as he hit the button for their floor in the elevator.

“There were some of those, too and ones that had meat inside of them.”

“A strudel—”

“Thought those had fruit.”

“They do,” he said as the elevator doors opened to their floor. “But they also have these stuffed meat ones that are amazing—kind of like Beef Wellington. There’s a similar dish in Russia, but it’s more of a meat pie or pocket. Natalia loved those. The _paczki_ was always too sweet, but she insisted that I try some.”

The memories swarmed over him and he grinned.

“Even when they didn’t tell her to feed me, she wanted me to share her meals. She was so small, and I never thought she ate enough, but she would portion out her food so I could have some.” It had frustrated him, especially in the colder climes when they traveled to them.

“Kind of like she was feeding you in Switzerland?” Steve paused in the door to his bedroom.

“Yeah,” Bucky admitted. “That and letting me know it wasn’t poisoned. You never know what other people put in the food. It’s not safe to eat if you haven’t observed its construction or just done it yourself.”

Steve’s expression went grim. “Is that part better now?”

Bucky shrugged. “We make everything here.”

“And if I go grab us some meat strudel and _paczki_ for her to have when she gets back?”

He grinned. “You can taste test it for me, just keep an eye on who you’re buying it from.”

“I can do that,” Steve nodded, then glanced at his watch. It was after six in the morning. “Hey Friday, can you find me an Austrian place that makes meat strudels and is open this early?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers…” The conversation followed Steve into his room, and Bucky headed for his own shower.

A random feather sat in his sink and he smiled. They’d been finding these little bits everywhere despite having cleaned them up several times.

By the time he emerged, showered, freshly shaved and dressed in clean clothes, there was coffee in the kitchen and Steve had already left. Bucky checked his phone. They still had another 90 minutes. He took a good look around the suite and the floor, and went to work straightening. Stark had cleaners who came in to handle the other floors periodically, but they didn’t want anyone on this floor.

He was halfway through vacuuming when he paused and went for his phone. The message he sent to Steve was pretty quick.

**_Get her flowers._ **

**Steve:** _Already planned on it. Chrysanthemums again?_

Fuck. Flowers had meanings, right? That’s what she said.

“Friday?”

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?”

“What flowers say we missed you, and we’re sorry?”

“Carnations are common I miss you flowers. Pink and red carnations can both be used. Pink carnations are often used to signify the concept that someone is unforgettable, while red carnations symbolize both admiration and missing another. They are useful for apologies as well, though the best apology flowers are red and white roses according to Ms. Potts.”

Whoever that was. 

Red and white roses. Pink and red carnations. Okay. He sent that off to Steve.

 **Steve:** _You sure?_

**_Friday says the roses are good apology flowers, and carnations say we missed her._ **

**Steve:** _Roses and carnations it is._

He resumed his cleaning, then stepped into her room and changed the bedding. He’d slept in here—or not slept really—since she’d left. Steve had checked on him, but Bucky wanted to be where he could still enjoy her scent—Steve had taken her pillow so he didn’t get to talk.

Which reminded him…

He went to Steve’s room to fetch the pillow and eyed the sketchpad lying in the middle of the bed. The drawing of Natalia in the center was stunning. The corner of her mouth was curved into a sly grin and her eyes held the promise of a secret.

Maybe Steve would let him have that one when he was finished.

Once Natalia’s room was straightened, and the sheets fresh on the bed with all her new pillows accounted for, he wiped down her bathroom and finally retreated to the living room for coffee.

There was still another half hour before her flight landed.

Steve made it back fifteen minutes after Friday confirmed the plane had touched down at JFK.

 

 

“She’s in the car,” Steve reminded him. “Morning traffic is going to be a bear.” But he wasn’t any less impatient as he sat drumming his fingers against the table while pretending to drink his coffee. The boxes of pastries sat on the counter waiting for her.

The flowers they’d stuffed into three different makeshift vases—including one pitcher—a bundle on the coffee table in front of the sofa, one on the table there in the kitchen, and more in her bedroom. Steve hadn’t been able to decide on just one combination, so he’d gotten a few.

Bucky leaned back against the counter, arms folded. He could sit in a sniper’s perch for days if necessary. He could wait another forty-five minutes.

Her text had been beautiful when it arrived.

 **Natalia:** _Here. Tony sent a car. Ready to be there._

Beautiful.

He’d hurt her, and a few hours earlier she’d still be working on the fact she was hurt. Now she was ready to be here.

He was more than ready.

**_We’re here and very much ready for you to be here._ **

She sent him back some emoji, but the smile and the kiss made sense even if he didn’t care for the cartoon graphics. He knew she sent the same things to Steve, he’d seen a couple. Wasn’t sure if she did it to Barton or Stark…

“Stark is going to come see her when she gets here,” he said, abruptly.

“I know,” Steve said, his fingers ceasing their drumming. “He’s her friend. We have to remember that.”

“Do we have to like it?” His objection to Stark wasn’t the same as his objection to Sam. Sam was annoying. Stark he owed—but he didn’t want to owe him Natalia. He wanted to be selfish with her, he wanted…he wanted a lot of things.

“We can’t hate it, Buck.” The words weren’t the same, and Steve sounded more resigned than not. “Look—Nat’s known Tony longer than me…”

“She’s known me longer than all of you.” Even with the abbreviations forced into their acquaintance.

“I know, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about Tony or about Clint. Now there’s the kid—you know for someone who keeps herself aloof, she’s always been involved. I think I let the window dressing fool me for a while, but if I spend any time thinking about it…she’s always there. She pulled me out of my funk, she used to drink with Tony so he wouldn’t be alone, she’d tease Barton when he got too sober, used to pull Bruce out of his shell, trusting him even when she was terrified of him…”

Bucky frowned at the last.

“…even Thor. She could make him smile with an off the cuff remark, and he was probably the most grounded of all of us back then. I watched her do it again with the new team—patience with Vision to explain things, kindness with Wanda even when Wanda was terrified of herself, indulgence with Rhodey because his military training didn’t always mesh up with us and they’d debate tactics endlessly.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Even when I wanted to check out of those conversations, she kept it going. She always made time for Sam, a word here, a check in there, to make sure he was looking after himself when he seemed to be burning it at both ends because he was helping me look for you and I was so—I just trusted Nat would be there to have my six without realizing I didn’t always have hers.”

Steve had apparently been doing a lot of thinking. The description fit the tone and manner she'd taken with Spider-Punk as well. The lesson of steel delivered in a velvet glove.

“Nat gets involved, as stealthily as she handles a mission, you don’t even notice she’s there and all she’s doing until she’s gone.” His expression tightened.

“We noticed.”

“Took me too long, Buck. I’m not doing that again.” The firm conviction in his tone resonated with Bucky. “You said the same thing in Venice. You weren’t walking away.”

“No,” he repeated. “I’m not.”

“Neither am I. And I don’t think Tony is either. So—we gotta adapt to the fact those two are close, and whatever that ends up meaning.”

With a frown, Bucky stared at the closed elevator doors as if he could will her closer through sheer glare alone. “Doesn’t mean we have to like it.”

Steve laughed. “Okay, now it sounds like we’re talking about Sam again.”

“No,” Bucky told him quietly. “I’m talking about decades of having to watch others use her—having to let them use her—having to stand aside. I don’t have all of them back. But the sense of them—they’re there. I will _deal_ with it. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Tony isn't using her,” Steve said slowly and his gaze too remained fixed on the elevator doors. “For what it’s worth though…I don’t think she expects us to like everything.”

“But we need to trust her,” Bucky finished the thought. “Making her think I didn’t was a mistake.”

“Me too.” Steve sighed. “Never thought I’d be this bad at a relationship.”

“You were wretched at dating,” Bucky told him. “You could barely show up when I found you a girl.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I was bad at it because they weren’t interested in me?”

“No, Punk, it didn’t. Cause you never gave those ladies a chance. You had it in your head that their minds were made up and you never tried to change them.” Even the girls who had genuinely liked Steve—the kind who wanted gentle and not brash. The evenings always ended up the same, Bucky would have to escort both girls and Steve disappeared on him or just followed behind like he was the porter.

More often than not, Bucky would find a way to let the girls down easily and take Steve out for a drink. Other times, he just took them dancing.

“Hard to look back and see what they would have been interested in,” Steve mused.

“That’s cause you’re a punk,” Bucky said unceremoniously. “You do know Natalia is interested right?” Because there could be a whole other problem if Steve hadn’t figured that out.

“Oh, that one I do know.” Steve grinned. “Took me a while, like I said, but I’m not a total idiot.”

“Good. Because pal—I can’t fix the stupid if you keep taking all of it.”

That made Steve laugh and Bucky relaxed.

“Course,” Steve said after a few moments. “You used to be a lot better with the ladies.”

“Natalia’s not like any other lady I’ve ever known.” Because there was history, because so much had been taken from them, because…because she was her. She didn’t seem to mind the darkness around him or what he was capable of—maybe because she was just as capable as he.

“That’s the truth.”

They fell into an almost contemplative silence, and Bucky thought back to the night after Azzano, after they escaped the destroyed base and had almost broken Natalia by covering her. They’d taken turns sitting with her, and it had been as easy as breathing to hand her off to Steve while he kept watch, and Steve never seemed to mind when it was Bucky’s turn to sit with her.

Just like it wasn’t a problem waiting with him now, both of them eager to see her—to make amends and to just have her back where they could protect her. Where she would be safe. “I don’t know if I’m ready to join the Avengers,” he told Steve quietly.

His best friend twisted to loo at him. “What’s brought that on?”

“Natalia,” he told him, meeting his gaze. “She wants me to be there to watch your back, because she can’t be. Because she knows that is what I used to do.”

“You were good at it—but I don’t expect that Buck. You’ve fought enough, if you want to stop, I’m fine with it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind the fight so much. It always comes down to a fight. I just don’t want to leave her here. I don’t want her to be alone.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Me neither.”

“But I know if she had a choice, she would be out there—with you.” That didn’t bother him either. Except…

“And you’d be right there, then, wouldn’t you?” The wry knowing smile eased the stab of guilt Bucky experienced because yes, that would be exactly where he would want to be.

“Don’t take it personally?” Because Steve was his best friend, and if he needed him, then he would show up.

“I’m good Buck, I fought to get you back so you could choose what you want to do, not so you could follow me right back into the fight.”

But his gaze said he knew Bucky would if it came to that and Bucky nodded, because that was exactly where he would be— _if_ Steve needed him. Until then…

“The pardon might require me to join.” That had been on the table. Though they knew it was going through, they didn’t have all the details finalized yet.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to make you fight. Lang’s kind of a member, and he’s in San Francisco. Clint was part time and was often off with his family. Nat and I still ran missions for SHIELD. Just because you belong doesn’t mean anything other than we’ve got your back—and I would have it even if you weren’t.”

Belonging.

He’d only ever belonged to one person before. Even if Steve was family, that wasn’t where he’d belonged.

Until now.

It was…nice.

“Ms. Romanoff’s car has just pulled into the garage.”

Thrill skated through him.

She was here.


	18. Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha reunites with her guys, and receives a hell of a welcome home
> 
> *We earn our rating here...

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Reconciliation**

**Natasha**

 

 

The driver—not Happy, which was both a relief and a disappointment—opened the rear door to let her out. The limo had pulled into the garage out of sight from the crowd of lookie-loos and fans that liked to camp out front. Although today she’d seen a few protesting signs. She’d caught up on the news on the flight—including the HammerBots the team encountered while she was gone. They weren’t Vanko drones, but the technology was similar. With Justin Hammer still in prison likely annoying his cellmates, she would have to dig a little deeper to see if those bots were an inside or outside job.

A yawn split her jaw as she nodded to the driver and then made her way to the elevator. She was still Nadja Rasmussen, but the closer they got to the Tower, the more the cover eroded. She wanted out of the faux ankle booted heels that made her legs look fabulous even as they tortured her feet. She left her jacket unbuttoned as she opened the door and pulled her carryon behind her. The purse straps were looped over the handles.

The elevator doors opened with a quiet ding revealing Tony leaning against the back wall, his arms folded and glasses in one hand. Clearly, he’d been waiting.

“Tony,” she said by way of greeting, and let Nadja fall away completely.

“Red…” His gaze flicked over her. “Yeah, I’m never going to go with the blonde, Red. It just doesn’t suit your face.”

With a tired smirk, she hit the button for Steve’s floor, and leaned against the wall next to the panel as the elevator made its ascent. “Good thing this isn’t my face.”

“My point.” He studied her expectantly as she stripped off the narrow framed glasses and folded them closed. “You all right?”

“Always,” she murmured. “How about you? How’s the head?”

“Right as rain. Sorry about the other night.” The guard in his posture shifted as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“You didn’t throw up on me,” she said. “That’s a win.”

He gaped for a moment, then scowled. “You took off without a word. Friday—hold the elevator.”

The elevator ceased its upward motion, and she settled in to wait him out.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Tony’s frown deepened. “Red, you can’t just take off and disappear without a word. You were in _Spain._ ”

“I know where I was.” Then she lifted her gaze to meet his. Her eyes ached from the contacts, but she hadn’t bothered to remove them yet. Once they came out, they were going in the trash. “Am I a prisoner Tony?”

He blinked. “No. What the hell, Red?”

“Then I can come and go as I please.”

Shoulders sagging a bit, he sighed. “Yes, you can—but…” Pushing away from the wall, he faced her directly. “I had no idea where you were, which meant I couldn’t look out for you. You told Friday to not track you unless it was an emergency, so I couldn’t verify you were all right. You kept your phone off so I couldn’t even contact you. You can’t do that. You can’t leave me in the dark like that—what if something happened?”

“Then it would have happened,” she told him as gently as possible. “Tony, you’re not responsible for me. I can…”

“Oh shove the I can take care of myself crap,” he wasn’t quite snarling, but his tone wasn’t friendly. “We’re friends, Tasha. Remember?”

“Tony…”

“Friends or not?” He wasn’t letting it go.

“We are friends,” she told him firmly.

“Good. Friends tell each other things. They let their friends help them. They don’t—they don’t disappear _again_.” His anger evaporated and for one bleak moment, anxiety flattened his eyes and genuine panic seemed to flicker within them before he covered and put his glasses on. “I forgive you.” His voice was thick. “Let’s go Friday, the super twins have been miserable since you left and I’ve got a meeting at the UN in an hour.”

“Tony…”

“We’re good, Red. You’re back. That’s the important part.” The shutters on his expression closed and he slid his hands into his pockets. “Looks like the full pardon for Barnes is in the works. Ellis is on board, and the new Secretary of State is already working with the other countries to handle the fallout.”

“I heard—about the pardon part. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He wasn’t looking at her, as if it would erase whatever naked, raw emotion he’d displayed earlier.

“Friday…hold.” They were a couple of floors away when the elevator glided to a stop. “Tony, I wasn’t running away.”

He eyed her. “No?”

“Well maybe a little,” she could admit that. “But I had a reason to go that wasn’t running.”

“You going to share it with the class?” He already knew, at least some of it. He was damn good at controlling his micro expressions when he wanted to.

“A man’s son had been kidnapped. He contracted me to handle the negotiations.”

“That sounds like the truth, but it’s hard to tell with the mask.” Tony tapped a finger against his chin. “It is the truth, but not all of it.”

“Not the specifics, no.” Telling any of them Guerda used her to pay the ransom would just piss them all off, so no. She would keep that part to herself. “I do have some discretion.”

He snorted, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward easing the anger in his eyes. “The kid okay?”

“He will be, he’s going to have some trauma. There’s no escaping that when someone robs you of your sense of security.” She blew out a breath. “But he’s back with his father now. And—I have some information.”

“Such as?”

“There is a shipment of Chitauri weaponry arriving at the Port of New Orleans next week on a freighter with Panamanian flags. Shipping container 804921. The weaponry in that shipment were all deemed active, and functional.”

He whistled. “You can trust your source?”

“In as much as it didn’t benefit him to lie to me.”

Just like that the wheels were turning in his head. “We can work with that information…”

“It also gives you a little more leverage with the committee.” Because alien weapons were a threat to everyone and none of those governments wanted to deal with them.

“And keep them out of government hands.” Another concern. Tony had taken the turning of a new leaf seriously. No one needed to have those weapons. Not the Avengers, not him, not the governments, and definitely not any of the lunatics crazy enough to use them.

“Taking the container before they reach the port would probably be the safest option.”

“Before U.S. waters.” Tony slanted a look at her.

“Jurisdiction of Panama before then, since they’d be under the laws of the country of the flag they fly.” And Panama was one of the few non-signatories to the Accords. They hadn’t agreed with the terms, so they were a non-signing member, which meant the Accords were not enforceable in their territory.

“Could burn a bridge.” But he didn’t sound opposed.

“Or motivate them to sign under the new terms, potentially if it avoids them some international embarrassment by being linked to potential weapons of mass destruction.”

His chin dipped, and the furrow in his brow deepened. He wasn’t pissed at her at all anymore, his entire focus had shifted to that shipping container and the Accords. “That’s not bad,” he murmured. “We could do that—be a little tricky, but, effective.”

For the space of three heartbeats his mind was elsewhere, then his gaze snapped to her. “As make up presents, I like it. It’s original. You take off again, you tell me. I’ll respect your wishes, and keep my distance, but I need to know.”

“Thank you for the upgraded ride back,” she murmured.

“Red, I’m serious.”

“I know you are…”

“And for what it’s worth, Barton’s more pissed at you than I was.”

Was.

Which meant they were good now. “I know.”

“Good.” He folded his arms. “All right, Friday. We’re letting her off the hook.”

“Good plan, Boss. Ms. Romanoff, did you want me to let Mr. Parker know you’ve returned?”

Tony smirked, and Nat shook her head.

“Just check in with him. He has another four days before we’re due to train.” And at Tony’s raised eyebrow, she shrugged. “He went on patrol. So I grounded him.”

“Better you than me,” Tony laughed. “Those puppy dog eyes kill me.”

“They’re not so bad.” The elevator dinged and she pushed away from the wall as the doors opened. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“You better believe it,” he muttered, then louder, “Here she is gentlemen. Safe and sound as promised.” The fact he took ownership of her arrival, and managed to sound smug about it made her laugh. She pulled her carryon behind her and flipped him off behind her back. “Classy Red. Real classy.”

Steve and James were both standing as the doors closed behind her. For the first time in three days, she took a deep breath. Steve was safe. James was getting his pardon. They were standing in front of her, and they were safe. It made it hard to remember the disappointment from before she left.

That was then. This was now. And…this was good.

“Hey,” she said by way of greeting lacking anything more erudite.

“Hey.” Steve was the first to move, and between one blink and the next, she found herself swept up into a hug. The man was huge. His embrace practically swallowed her. Then he lifted his head and raised a hand to her face, but hesitated.

“Oh…” She pulled back to slip the wig off and shook her head. It didn’t take long for her to get used to the pressure, but it was always a relief to tug them free. Her own hair was braided tightly to her skull. Then she deactivated the mask, and gathered the mesh off. “Contacts will have to wait a minute.”

“There you are,” Steve murmured, but his gaze narrowed to her cheek, then James frowned at her from over Steve’s shoulder.

“It looks worse than it is,” she assured him. Unfortunately, the bruise had faded some, but it had taken a lot longer for the swelling to go down. Especially with her distinct lack of sleep.

James tugged the scarf from her neck, his gaze on her bruised throat. “It is?”

She lifted her chin, and met James’ gaze, then Steve’s. They wore matching looks of concern. “I assure you—the other guy looks much worse.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth quirked upward. “That shouldn’t be funny, Angel.”

“We can laugh or we can cry.” She kept it matter of fact. “How is your hand?”

She glanced from one to the other, but they both looked fine—maybe the right one was a little ruddier than the other, but it could be the light.

“It wasn’t a bad break,” he said. “It’s better now.”

“My bruises are going to fade,” she reminded them. Then reached a hand over to run her thumb over James’ cheek. “I heal, remember?”

Steve’s frown deepened, then he seemed to visibly brace himself and shake it off. “The other guy looks worse?”

“The other guy is dead.”

James nodded once, but he didn’t release his frown. “Do you need ice for it?”

“Later.” She said. “If it’s still there after I get some sleep. I’ll ice it.” It only hurt a little to swallow, and thankfully her larynx didn’t sound crushed. This would be an entirely different conversation. She hadn’t failed to notice the flowers filling the room or the fact they’d both showered and cleaned up, it was like they’d dressed up for her and she smelled like two days of travel across three continents.

It was the hesitation in both of them that gave her pause however. Steve still held one hand, while her free hand rested on James’ cheek. They weren’t frozen, but paused as if not certain what to do next.

Needing to make this easier, she rose on her tiptoes and brushed her lips to Steve’s. A light kiss, a gentle one. “I’m glad you’re better,” she told him. “I was worried.”

His smile grew. “I’m fine, Angel. Promise.”

Satisfied, she turned to James and he cupped her bruised cheek with absolute care before kissing her. The slow burn of his lips on hers was not soft or gentle or brief. But she leaned into the kiss, bracing her hand on his chest. Surprisingly, Steve didn’t back off but kept hold of her hand and placed another hand on her hip as if to catch her.

This was what she’d missed. Being surrounded by them. Just having them right there and knowing they were okay. The kiss demanded, but gave, too. It was like James poured in every moment since she’d left, and she had to grip his shirt to help her own balance even with Steve’s help. When he released her, she barely got the wow out before Steve pinned her, his lips crashing into hers. The trade off happened so smoothly; she barely had time to register it. Thrill raced along her nerve endings. His fingers dug into her hip even and it was James keeping her on her feet this time as Steve’s tongue delved against hers.

When he finally released her, she could still taste both of them on her lips. “Well…hello.”

“Welcome home,” Steve murmured, then he pressed his forehead to hers. Behind her, James buried his face against her bruised throat, pressing the gentlest of kisses to the marks there. They just buffeted her. She was airplane rough, still dressed in Nadja’s business clothes, her hair a wreck, and her heart racing too fast.

It was nice.

Closing her eyes, she covered James’ hand on her hip and smiled when Steve covered her hand on his chest with his. No words, just—holding her there. They didn’t ask any more questions or chastise her for going.

Getting hurt was part of the job. Sometimes being hurt was just part of life.

This here was something altogether new, and seemed precariously fragile and more secure than the best tether line. Images assailed her.

The crushed leviathan flipping in mid-air and beginning to explode as Tony fired at it, and Steve curling back, shield up to cover her. The way he caught her whole body as he yanked her to him as they dove toward the glass window to escape the grenade. The sensation of plummeting as the floor below her gave way, and a metal arm snapping out to catch her hand; then hauling her back upward. Another plunge, this one out of a window as the room behind her exploded, and the force of a body colliding with hers, catching her before the Soldier landed, holding her in a bridal carry.

Blinking, she opened her eyes and blew out a breath. Being held by them was as natural as breathing. She had no idea how long she stood there, before her heart slowed and the tension in her core began to unlock.

“Do you want to hear about the job?” It was an olive branch. Granted—she’d not been thrilled with either of them when she left, but she never wanted to punish them. The whisper soft kisses James left on her throat were warming her all the way to her toes, even as he stroked his thumb against her hip.

“Maybe after you’ve rested,” Steve murmured. “Would a bath help?”

“I’d probably fall asleep,” she admitted. After the last few days… “I haven’t slept since I left.”

Hands flexed against her, probably admonishing her. “And you yelled at us for not sleeping,” James chastised.

“I didn’t yell,” she pointed out. “I told you that you needed sleep. You’re still healing. And you said Steve broke his hand.”

“And you’re not healing,” James pointed out, his tone almost smug. “Or you wouldn’t still be so bruised.”

“Ass.” But her comment lacked any heat. Steve chuckled, rubbing his forehead to hers gently. Each time she peeked up at him, she had to marvel at the look of contentment on his face. “You’re really okay?”

“I’m really okay. Super serum sealed and approved.” The lightness of the quip didn’t erase her concern. “And yes, I want to fill you in on all of that, too. Buck mentioned the training went well with the kid.”

“Just delivering an object lesson. Training starts in a few days.”

“I checked on him,” James admitted, and Steve lifted his gaze as if looking through her to him. “When you got called out. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I headed back out to Queens. Went to the safe house, then tracked the kid’s route that evening.”

It as a fifty-fifty split that Peter listened to her, but she’d hoped he’d erred on the side of caution even if the kid didn’t appear to have a cautious bone in his body. Dammit, she still needed to check out Oscorp. She moved that mentally higher on her list alongside Roxxon—corporate America, making all of the Soviet tales of capitalist pigs true.

“Home by seven, didn’t leave his place. Lights out at ten. Hung out another couple of hours. No movement.”

The corner of her mouth curved up as Steve’s gaze locked on hers. James almost sounded grumpy that Peter had listened.

“He’s a little overprotective,” Steve murmured.

“Pot,” James said without rancor, releasing her long enough to thump him. “Kettle.”

Natasha laughed. “All right, off…I need to shower. I want to wear comfy clothes, and then I’ll brief you two on everything.”

“After you eat and—”

A chime sounded overhead, and though gratified she wasn’t alone in groaning, she closed her eyes at the intrusion.

“This better be an emergency,” James growled.

“Let’s hope it’s not,” Steve said with a sigh, and she squeezed his hand.

“Sorry for the interruption folks, but I need to borrow Cap for a quick tete a tete with the Wakandan king.” Tony actually did sound apologetic. “Shouldn’t take long—I hope.”

“Does it have to be right now?” Steve asked, but his expression was already settling. Steve Rogers may not want to go, but Captain America would do his duty. It was one of the things she admired about him so damn much.

“Sorry Cap,” Tony repeated. “He’s only got about thirty minutes, and he said he had something he needed to talk to both of us about.”

“It’s okay,” she told Steve. “I have at least twenty-four hours before we need to roll on the next job.” She emphasized the we. Before—before the fallout over her date with Tony, they’d been divvying the work of the three jobs.

The longing in his gaze threatened to undo her, but he finally sighed. “Fine, I’ll be up in a minute, Tony.”

“See you then.”

The chime told them the line had cut and Steve nuzzled the corner of her mouth with the same coaxing he’d indulged her in on the roof. The softness of his beard tickled her face, and she laughed into the kiss.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised, and then he eased away from her and James’ arms looped around her waist as he brought her back to his chest. She couldn’t look away from Steve’s eyes as he visibly brought himself under control. It was a fascinating exercise in professionalism as Captain America slid firmly into place. He must have noticed her stare because, he raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“You’re really hot,” she told him honestly. “Sometimes I forget how much.” Sometimes she’s too busy admiring the man beneath all that muscle, gorgeous eyes and sweet hair. Appearances, as she well knew, could be enormously deceiving. Didn’t make him any less pretty.

Pink suffused his cheeks and his grin widened to almost bashful proportions. “I’d dispute that, but I know better than to argue with a lady.” Then he winked.

Her knees went weak at just a little gesture, and then he was striding for the elevator. “Take care of our girl, Buck.”

“I plan on it,” James said, laughter underscoring the words. After the elevator closed behind Steve, Natasha sighed and leaned back against James.

“What’s so funny?”

“Stevie,” James admitted. “I just finished telling him he was terrible about dating because he never even tried—then he goes and proves me right. He can charm you Natalia, that’s something to be admired.”

The corner of her mouth kicked up, and pulled on her bruised cheek. “Yes he can.” There was no point disputing it, even if she never wanted anyone to know how much these two meant to her. Despite the potential threat to their security, she didn’t want to deny it anymore.

“So,” James whispered, teasing a line of kisses along her ear. “Bath?”

“Hmm…need to wash my hair. Shower would be better.”

“I can wash your hair.” There were a lot of layers to that offer. “If you’d like.”

“You do know if the bathwater sloshes, it’s going to get everywhere.” The weight of his hand spreading over her abdomen sent heat coiling through her. Even her tired seemed to take a step back.

“Then we’d have to be very careful…” He caught her earlobe in his teeth, and she closed her eyes. Pressed against her back with his arms around her put her in a vulnerable position, but at the moment, she felt anything but.

The familiarity threading and weaving through every single interaction they’d shared tangled like gossamer knots stretching and tightening with each word. Her pulse beat noisily, and the heat beneath her skin seemed to suffuse her everywhere. Covering his metal hand on her stomach, she tilted her head back and pressed it to his shoulder so she could look up at him.

The look on his face was heat, and hope, and want, and she shuddered under the weight of it. Brushing the fingers of his right hand against her bruised throat, he murmured. “I can be careful, Natalia.”

Believing him wasn’t a problem. “How could I have forgotten you?” That’s the part she hated. The memories slipping through, escaping from whatever dark place they’d been banished torment her with nothing but a long series of _what ifs_.

“We had no choice,” he said with a sigh. “But they couldn’t erase us completely—some part of us still remembered.”

Still meant something to each other. She wanted it back, she wanted all of it back.

But sometimes— _we have what we have, when we have it._ She could have him right now, she had him and she had Steve. It was enough.

It was far more than enough.

Twisting, she wrapped her arms around his neck and arched when he lifted her up so easily, she kicked off her shoes. “I could definitely use a shower.”

The open, free grin on his face turned her inside out. Pivoting, he carried her toward her room, and nudged the door closed behind them. Not once did his gaze leave hers and it was wrecking her, shredding down all her carefully placed walls.

Once they were in the bathroom, he whispered,“Your eyes, I want to see you.”  A glance over her shoulder in the mirror and she saw the brown eyes reflected back at her. Twisting for a moment, she plucked the contacts out and dropped them into the trash before looking back at him again.

He grinned, then slid her onto the counter with ease, but instead of backing away, he dipped his head to kiss her.

A question.

A tease.

A request.

She parted her lips and swallowed a moan before it could escape when he swiped his tongue across hers. The coiled heat in her stomach tightened, as he flicked open the buttons on her blouse with a careless kind of ease—until one of them actually plinks off the wall and she laughed into the kiss. Head lifted, he gave her a sleepy eyed look that should by all rights not be as sexy as it was, but damn…

“Sorry about the button.”

“I don’t care,” she assured him.

“No?” Then his grin grew a tad more wicked as he tugged the shirt wide and ripped the rest of the buttons off. They flew away like popcorn kernels escaping the heat and she tilted her head back to rest against the mirror laughing harder even as she tried to smother the sound. “You did say you didn’t care, right?” The last question came as he hooked a metal finger under the band of her bra where it lay between her breasts. She’d half expected it to be cold, but it was warm where it teased against her skin.

“I did,” she told him, not looking away from his eyes.

“So if I do this…” He snapped the band with one tug. Not that it had been an especially expensive bra, but the fabric seam just gave way totally. “Still don’t care?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not even a little bit.”

Teeth on his lower lip he ran his fingers down between her breasts to where the skirt buttoned on the side, the flimsy little piece of plastic and the thin zipper didn’t stand a chance. He lifted an eyebrow and she planted her hands on the counter and pushed upward, balancing all of her weight on them. But he didn’t move until she gave him an exasperated smile.

“Yes, you can rip it.”

The fabric tore right down the side, splitting the skirt in half and leaving her clad only in a pair of very functional, if ordinary black panties. She’d dressed for business, not for pleasure. Not that this seemed to be even a little bit of deterrent. He peeled the fabric away and then glided his hands up her legs to her hips, then inside the shirt along her sides before nudging the shirt and the bra off. It took a little wiggling, but they joined the ruins of her skirt on the floor.

Heat trailed everywhere his gaze went as he glanced over her, then back to her eyes. With infinite care, he slid his hands up to her hair and began to loosen the braids one by one. The man was going to send her up in flames and he’d barely touched her. But awareness of him tingled everywhere from the tightness of her nipples to the heat in her cunt.

With each braid he loosened, he massaged her scalp and she tilted her head forward. It was like he’d wound every bit of the tension within her taut, and unwound it with equal attention to detail. He stood right between her thighs, his attention so focused on his task it gave her an unguarded chance to just stare at him.

She’d seen so many expressions on his face—anger, frustration, brutal sadness, and undisguised joy. They rolled like fast moving storm systems across his features that you’d miss them if you didn’t pay close attention. The one he wore now, though, seemed to focus all of his will and attention on her. Just her. She’d never felt so naked, and so protected in the same moment.

Even crowded on the cold marble counter, with his bulk between her and any exit. She didn’t need a way out, and something much older unlocked within her. Hyper vigilance kept her alive, always know where the exits were, examine every threat, identify every weakness, exploit them to maintain control, and never, ever be distracted. It wasn’t just a habit, it was as vital to her as breathing. She couldn’t not do it…

Except right now as James carded his fingers through her freed hair, and it fell in crimped waves, and probably looked more like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket after so many hours so tightly bound, she didn’t care about where they were or where the door was or the fact she had on no weapons. She’d removed them before the flight, not risking anything triggering airport security while she traveled incognito.

She was alone, naked, and disarmed with one of the most dangerous people in the world…and it was _right_.

When his gaze returned to hers, she had to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat. Then he dipped his gaze to her shoulder, followed by his lips to press the silvery scar there. Where he’d shot her in DC.

Then he moved to her arm, and kissed a bruise she hadn’t even noticed she had. Then he moved to the one above her breast, before mouthing light kisses over the circle of black and blue finger marks on her throat. Shuddering at the singular caress of his lips on her skin, she hooked her fingers under the edge of his shirt. She wanted to see him again.

But he caught her wrists, and carefully pulled her hands away. “Not yet,” he said, before pressing her hands back to the counter, and then he nuzzled a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I saw you—in my dreams, you know. Through the fractured lens of my memories…the way your nipples flush pink when you’re turned on, how that flush spread across your chest and even dips to your navel.” He licked a path of kisses across her chest as if illustrating a point.

Then he cupped them, one hand on each breast and his cool blue eyes fixed on hers. “I could almost feel their weight, hear how you caught your breath, and how fucking gorgeous you were all spread out for me. How amazing it was to look up and see you above me.”

His throat convulsed as he swallowed and she arched her back as he began to massage her breasts. It was the most unusual feeling, tender and erotic. The shift of his hands allowing him to run the backs of his fingers against her sensitive nipples, just enough to tease but not quite give her what she wanted.

Fuck, she wanted him.

“I can see you outlined by the faintest of lights, but I know every inch of your body. I know I do—I don’t need light to find where you want to be kissed or how you like to feel teeth or that there is a spot here…” He eased down and scraped his teeth along the underside of her breast that sent a sizzle of electricity right to core. It backed all the breath up in her lungs, and then he closed his lips around one erect nipple and she slid her hand into his hair, desperate to keep him there and half wanting to yank him away and kiss him.

She did neither, grounding herself in the solidness of him as he teased, licked, and sucked on her nipple until she was shaking. Then he moved to the other. Her thighs clamped against his hips, longing to close so she could get some kind of friction. With every hard pull of his mouth, she pulsed closer to the edge.

“But you know what I can’t remember?” His voice had gone so low, deep, and raw with need it was like a caress all its own, and her skin pebbled with goosebumps at every word.

He slid his fingers down to her panties, and she knew they weren’t long for this world and damn if she wasn’t already lifting her hips. She needed him to touch her or let her touch him. Instead of tearing away the panties, he lifted his head to look at her. “Still with me?”

“You’re a tease,” she choked out, and didn’t give a damn how needy it made her sound. She seduced men, they didn’t seduce her. But he and Steve had been making her crazy, and right now her body responded to every touch James gave her, and she wanted more.

No, she needed more.

“A tease doesn’t deliver,” he told her as he slid finger smoothly between her labia and grazed her clit. “The feel of you around me, I couldn't remember it exactly.”

She exhaled on a moan.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

It didn’t matter that she was sitting on her bathroom counter in a pair of panties with her hair crimped from the braids, bruised, battered, and exhausted. Beauty was stock in trade for a Widow. She used it to get what she needed, to manipulate, and to control. She knew exactly how attractive she was, and she’d never cared. It was a tool. Like her gun. Like her knife.

Like her.

But the raw, unpolished adoration in his eyes was so new, so—unexpected, and so sweet she couldn’t breathe.

“You—are amazing, Natalia,” he moved his free hand to her abdomen and traced his fingers over her skin as he drew lazy circles of her clit. It wasn’t a tease, it was an insistent, demanding pressure and she bucked a little under the contact and he pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to the corners of her eyes, then to her nose, and finally to the bruise on her cheek. When his mouth locked on hers, and she was so primed that when he increased the pressure she came apart with a cry.

The orgasm stormed through her, and she clasped his shoulders. The fluttering sensation amazed her. The thud of her heart thunderous as he lifted his head, licking another kiss across her lips before straightening.

And fuck if she didn’t want more.

A pitiful little moan escaped when he pulled his hand away, and she glared at him. James? He laughed softly, and traced his finger damp with her slick against her lower lip before kissing her again. “I’m far from done, Natalia,” he whispered. “But only if you’re still okay.”

“Please,” she whispered, fusing her mouth to his and fisting his hair to keep him still even as she gripped his hips with her thighs and pressed against him. With her breath on his lips, she whispered, “I’m good with everything. I promise.”

He traced fingers down her back then cupped her ass. “If that changes…” there was a warning beneath all that need.

“I’ll tell you, I promise.”

His smile went boyish handsome and full of charm. “You’re gorgeous doll, all flushed and hot and wet against me.”

“And you have on too many clothes.”

It was his turn to laugh, but it turned to a gasp when she licked over the pulse point in his throat, then sucked on it gently. Not enough to mark the skin, not yet anyway. But definitely enough for him to feel it. He set her on her feet, and it was embarrassing how jelly legged she went before she got her muscles to cooperate. Then he kept his gaze on hers when he finally indulged her earlier fantasy and ripped her panties right off.

A girl could get used to that kind of strength. Then he lifted them to his nose and took a breath, and her whole body seemed to catch on fire. She didn’t think she could want him more, and then he did something like that.

Backing up a step, he let her go before he reached into her shower and turned on the water. “You did want a shower a right?”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded. Shower. That was what they’d come in here for. The man was making her stupid. With one hand reaching over his shoulder, he caught his shirt, and then tugged it up and over and off. It landed somewhere behind him before his hands went to the fly of his jeans.

There was a bruise the width of a grapefruit on his perfect pec, and she frowned at it.

“Sparring,” James said with a grin. “Stevie got a lucky shot.” There were other bruises, though much lighter or already fading. Steve had gotten in more than one.

Then he stripped off the jeans, and the boxer briefs right with them. He was like a piece of art, all sculpted muscle and strained skin, the scars twisting from his left shoulder down to his pec, striations like a tree—marking his life and his survival. She traced her gaze down his chest to the carved abdomen and the erection bobbing against his belly as if eager to see her. No part of his skin was truly smooth, it was all decorated with silvery scars, some laid over the top of others.

He’d healed so many injuries. She traced her hand against his left shoulder, carefully following the lines of abused flesh, and then she pressed her lips to them as if she could take away the history of pain woven across his body. The heat rolling off him wrapped around her like an embrace all its own.

When he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close, she gasped at the feel of skin on skin. His pupils dilated and it was so much more than when he’d held her earlier or cuddled with her in bed, when clothes separated them from all this glorious contact. It was too much and not enough, and she marveled at the look in his eyes as he gazed at her.

“My turn to ask,” she whispered. “This okay?”

“Doll—you’re perfect. This is perfect.” His voice sounded as wrecked as she felt.

Walking backwards, she stepped into the shower and he moved with her as though magnetized. The wash of warm water cascaded over her face and hair, and she closed her eyes as she leaned back into it. The heat beat against her over sensitized flesh, and she reveled in the way his chest teased her nipples, the barest of slick contact, there and gone again.

The shampoo smelled like vanilla and citrus when he worked it into her scalp. The last few days melted away from her as he massaged the back of her neck with the gentlest of touches, so mindful of her bruises while she’d almost forgotten they were there. When he rinsed out her hair, he was careful of her eyes and then he resumed his scalp massage with the conditioner and she was rapidly becoming a puddle.

When her back brushed against the cool wall, she glanced down to find him lathering soap over her arms, then her chest. He washed her with the same attention to detail he gave his weapons, no part of her was left untouched. As he rinsed her off, the brush of his fingers against her anus gave her a little pause, but he only smiled up at her as he moved to her hips, then her legs, and he paused to press a kiss to the scar on her navel. He traced the ridge of skin with his tongue, and her body sparked.

When he eased his shoulders between her thighs, her eyes opened again and she met his questioning gaze and smiled. He really was going to ask permission for everything. It would have been silly if it weren’t so damn thoughtful. Hers to give. No matter how much he wanted her. It was hers to give to him. And she didn't doubt for an instant, he would always ask.

“May I?”

“Please,” she invited him, and slid her thigh over his shoulder, trusting him to balance her. The warmth of his breath teased over her swollen clit, and she couldn’t look away from the expression he made as he gazed at her. When he traced the line of her cunt with his tongue, she couldn’t hold back the moan. Another careful lick, the contact so light and ephemeral it threatened to drive her even more mad with the need for relief. Then he sank two fingers into her, and her hips bucked forward, her leg tightening against him, but James kept one hand planted against her thigh, holding her steady.

When he nudged up the hood of her clit with his thumb, then locked his lips around it and sucked hard even as he twisted his fingers inside of her—she stopped thinking. She melted right there against the wall, the whole world narrowing down to the relentless pressure of his tongue on her clit, the suction of his lips, and the curve of his fingers inside of her.

The inexorable slow build of pressure turned into a raging conflagration, her mind shut down and she couldn’t have held back if she tried. The waves wracked over her as she came, her body arched. The need to be silent breaking as she gasped out a single moan, then he twisted his fingers again, and a second wave hit her before the first had fully past and this time the sound that tore free from her shook her down to her toes.

Boneless, wasted, and utterly destroyed she leaned against the wall and stared down at him as he eased his fingers away, and grinned up at her. “Fuck…I am never forgetting that.”

Neither would she.

She wanted to return the favor—desperately. But her throat wouldn’t be up to that. Not today. _Later_ , she promised herself. She would pay him back in spades for that later.

Somewhere, she found the strength to grip his hair gently and tugged. “Please…” Her use of the language faded along with the rest of her higher brain functions. There was only the heat of the shower, the glide of his skin, and the smoky warmth of his mouth as his lips collided with hers. She tasted herself on him, and groaned as she lapped at his tongue.

His fingers bit into her hips as he lifted her and she broke the kiss long enough to whisper, “Yes, James,” before he could even ask the question. Streams of water rolled down her, just more caresses to add to the treasure trove he’s been giving her.

“I’m not going to last long Doll,” he told her as if a warning.

“Then we’ll just have to do it again later,” she assured him. Despite her earlier orgasms, all she wanted was to feel him inside of her. “I want to know how this feels,” she told him, because she didn’t have that memory.

His gaze fixed on hers, and he said, “So do I.”

Then he eased into her with agonizing slowness. The thick weight of him stretching her, and sending eddies of miniature shockwaves through her system. The drag of him pressing through her swollen flesh left her gasping and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. The warmth of his metal beneath her ass steady and secure, the tile warming behind her back, and the press of him pushing into her until he was fully seated, and not once did they look away or blink.

His eyes mirrored her sense of awe. She was never going to forget this. When he slid his right hand behind her head, cupping it and shifted his left arm to cradle her more securely, she smiled.

“I know I said—I wanted to know,” he told her, his voice ragged with pent up need. “But—I _missed_ this. I’ve _missed_ you, Natalia. Zvezda moya—I need to move.”

She’d missed him, too. The rightness, the familiarity, all of it wove together and her mind might have forgotten but her body hadn’t. “Move, milli moi.” She locked her legs around his waist. The first thrust of him sent pleasure spiraling through her and her eyes sparked with tears. The second chased after it like trying to catch the stars and it pushed the air from her lungs.

Unable to tear her gaze away, she stared at him through a wavery line of tears. They’d forgotten this—forgotten each other. Every thrust seemed to take him deeper into her, battering against locked doors in her mind and her soul. And she wanted them all to tear open.

She wanted them back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, over and over again until she closed her mouth over his, and swallowed the regrets they shared along with the pleasure. Then his body tensed as his hips pounded against hers. Between the drag of his cock against her cunt, and her all but shattered defenses, she came again and he covered her cries with his kiss, his tongue delving deeper as he stiffened and came like a shot.

The pulse of him against her contracting muscles ignited another set of flurries through her system. He buried his face against her neck as she collapsed against him and held on, but she was so boneless and the only thing keeping her up was his arms around her.

She’d found him.

She’d found him again.

And she wasn’t letting go this time.

No matter how many lost memories lay between them. They could build new ones.

The tears slipped down her face along with the water from the shower as some long sealed dam shivers, the foundations of it threatening to crumble. It takes several, deep breaths to wrench back some kind of control. Yet even then, when she lifted her head and met his dazzling smile, she couldn’t control her own.

No masks.

No artifice.

Just James.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Welcome home, my star.” The warmth in his grin demanding she answer, and she couldn’t have stopped her smile if she’d tried. 

She was still floating when they finally left the shower and dried off. She pulled on James' t-shirt and ignored the panties as she wandered back out to where the food waited. Steve glanced up from his sketch book and glanced from her, to James, then back and with a hint of red flushing his ears, he asked,“Feeling better?"

“Oh yes,” she promised him, and made her way over to settle in his lap, before looping her arms around his neck.“No call out?”

“No Angel, no call out.”

The thrill at finding Steve there buoyed her even higher on some effervescent wave. There'd be time later for sobriety and business and debriefings later. 

Much later. 


	19. Attachment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve takes a big step.

**Chapter Nineteen**

**Attachment**

**Steve**

 

Arriving on the penthouse floor, Steve headed for the sunken living room where Tony sat in front of a large holo screen featuring only the Stark logo.

“Sorry to interrupt Cap,” he said without glancing up from the holoscreen in front of him and what looked like ship tracking or maybe some kind of radar.

“No you’re not,” Steve replied as he dropped onto the short side of the L sectional. The bruise on Natasha’s face worried him, he couldn’t pretend otherwise. It would never be a commentary on her capabilities; he just flat out didn’t like seeing her hurt. But the cool confidence in those green eyes when she’d said the guy who gave it to her was dead—it actually went a long way toward soothing his initial anger.

“Well…” Tony paused, and slanted a look at him. “Maybe seventy-thirty.”

“It’s fine, Tony.” He wasn’t going to discuss Natasha with him or their plans or the state of anything private between them. She was with Buck right now, and safe in the Tower. It would be enough until he could return to their floor. “What’s up with T’Challa?”

“He didn’t say, just sent a message requesting a conference with both of us and that it was important.” He checked his watch, and then a small message popped up on the smaller screen in front of him. Closing it, Tony gestured to the larger screen. “And we’re about to find out.”

The image resolved to the man in question. Dressed in a dark suit, the king gave them both a polite smile and a nod. “Captain. Mr. Stark.”

“Your Majesty,” Tony returned the greeting as diplomatically as Tony got. “I take it you’re on your way to New York?”

“I land within the hour. The committee has been informed of the potential tardiness and that meeting has been rescheduled for lunchtime.”

“They told me,” Tony said with a nod. “Hope you brought your fire gear, they’re not going to be friendly to the first round of terms.”

“I am unconcerned with their initial reactions, they will merely give us the lay of the land for the real battle.” The king remained seated, but the image gave them little in the way of anything around him.

“Fair enough,” Tony agreed, reaching for a coffee cup. “So what can we do for you?”

“In the interests of transparency, and continued positive relations, I wanted to let you know I have seen Ms. Romanoff.”

Steve raised his eyebrows, but he lacked Tony’s cooler response to the revelation. “Congratulations?”

A faint smile creased T’Challa’s lips, but his gaze went from Tony to Steve. He’d gotten to know the king better during their time in Wakanda. The graciousness of their host and the fact he’d given Bucky shelter despite everything—or maybe because of everything that had happened—said a great deal for his character.

T’Challa was a good man. A decent one.

“I am aware of the—potential discord between each of you and Ms. Romanoff since Germany.” What was he not saying? It was like balancing two separate conversations. “While I respect your differences, I take responsibility for certain choices made in the heat of the moment.”

His turning her in. That Steve understood.

“But after seeing her, I have decided to further amend my stance with regard to her status.” Her status? He’d withdrawn his charges against her, to the best of Steve’s knowledge T’Challa had no other issue with Natasha…hell, she’d been there the day his father died. Arguably, she’d been there and Steve had _seen_ her attempting to comfort him in that aftermath.

“Care to elaborate?” Tony had closed down, his expression as guarded as it had ever been and he stared at T’Challa as though sizing him up.

“As you are both aware, I reported to her actions in Germany to Ross, more interested in pursuing Barnes than worrying about the fate of one woman whose betrayal seemed in character—based on what I learned about her history later.”

Steve curled his fingers, but Tony flattened his hand just below the line of sight for the cameras on them. It was a gesture that meant cool it.

“Her carefully edited for maximum smear campaign history if you’re referring to Ross’ hate spin on it, you might need to review fresh research resources.”

“Mr. Stark, I am perfectly capable of doing my own research. But I also know that a public image, whether held in ill or held precious, can greatly misconstrue the truth. A woman like Ms. Romanoff is much more inclined to the shadows, therefore shadows mar the image the world sees.”

That was an interesting choice of words. Steve focused on just frowning. Nat had told him more than once that he was a terrible liar. So he didn’t even attempt to lie. The conversation bothered him, and maybe T’Challa was right, the face he put on it was open to interpretation—but hopefully it didn’t reveal anymore of his personal feelings.

Anymore than he may have already betrayed in his haste to leave Wakanda and _find_ her.

“Gentlemen, we can dance around this all day, but the wardog who delivered Sergeant Barnes to you in Switzerland informed me of a woman who looked very much like Ms. Romanoff being present.”

Tony’s mouth flattened. “I know a lot of red heads.”

“As you say.” But the corner of T’Challa’s mouth quirked. He knew they were lying.

“You’ll have to forgive us, Your Majesty,” Steve said, ignoring Tony’s glare for the moment. “The last few weeks have been a crash course in misconceptions.”

“I can understand that Captain, I have had similar eye opening experiences that while necessary were not particularly pleasant. And as I said when I began this conversation, I want to maintain a sense of transparency to avoid the misunderstandings of our recent past.”

A recent past that included T’Challa hunting down and trying to kill Bucky. A recent past that had Tony and Steve beating the hell out of each other. And a recent past that nearly cost both men everything—had in some ways—and left a wound on their relationship that may finally be free of infection, but would forever leave a scar.

“Fair enough. So you saw Ms. Romanoff?”

“Yes, in Spain—while I was not present personally, one of my wardogs was. This wardog helped Ms. Romanoff leave Morocco and make her way to Spain in the company of a young boy.”

That followed through with everything Steve knew about her job.

“Ms. Romanoff repaid the favor in kind with invaluable information. While the nature of that is not something you need to know, I was reminded of my complicity in her current situation.” The diplomatic choices in his wording couldn’t be overlooked.

“You’ve also retracted those charges and on at least two occasions that I can think of you spoke in her favor.” Tony spread his hands. “We don’t need a mea culpa. You weren’t the only one misled and making bad choices based on faulty information.”

“While I appreciate the kindness in your sentiment, I have decided to take my support one step further and I believe you two are the ones to help me.”

Tony didn’t even blink. “Depends on what it is you intend to do.”

“The French foreign minister intends to address the Committee later this week.”

Steve didn’t know the specific schedule but both Tony and T’Challa seemed up to speed.

“After some conversations, she has indicated that France is withdrawing its complaint against Ms. Romanoff for all actions alleged or real in light of the recent terrorist incident in Paris last month and Secretary Ross' subsequent activites.”

Paris. The memory of the long slice down her side, the bruises, and seeing her fighting against men heavily armed men in the street without regard for her own safety.

“Well that’s special, did France catch a cold and now they need her to nurse them?” The sarcasm echoing in those words shouldn’t have made Steve smile, and as much as he loved France and the French, they did have a bad habit of sneezing and giving the rest of the world a cold.

T’Challa chuckled. “Not quite. It would seem Ms. Romanoff is becoming something of a folk hero in their press and it has begun to sway public opinion.”

“Friday…” Tony glanced to the side. “Show me some examples.”

“Searching,” she answered, then images began to populate around T’Challa, with the stories highlighting not only her recent heroics but also her actions in New York, and more.

“Huh.”

The headline that stood out to Steve was… “The Black Widow League? What is that?”

“A fanclub,” T’Challa said, his serene smile growing. “With nearly thirty thousand active online members according to Shuri and growing each day.”

Tony laughed. “A fanclub?”

“Indeed.” He spread his hands. “The movement is growing, and I believe shining a light on it wouldn’t do any harm.”

Internet culture was still one of those oddities of the future he hadn’t acclimated to—where passions ran so high and so hot, what people proclaimed to love one week, they could debase and hate the following. “Shine a light, how? In my experience, even not reading the comments doesn’t make the Internet a solid resource for support.”

“True,” T’Challa focused on him.

“You actually know not to read the comments?” Tony gaped.

Steve couldn’t resist a little smirk. “I’m old, not dead.”

“But to your point, Captain,” T’Challa continued as if they hadn’t interrupted. “I believe if _we_ shine a light on it indirectly, we can help this movement along.”

“You want to set up something similar here in the States,” Tony mused, stroking his goatee with two fingers. “But a fanclub is insubstantial. A bunch of teenage girls wanting to be more like her—teenage boys spanking off to her—not enough to really sell it even if we can.”

“Then make it something more substantial.” Nat was so much more than her looks. “She’s brilliant, and she’s done a hell of a lot that people _don’t_ know about because she never stands up in a press conference and says look at me, I privatized world peace.”

“Yes Cap, I like my contributions being noticed and no, I’m not at all offended you’re comparing her to me.” The look Tony pinned on him lacked any real scorn. “But—that said—that’s not a bad idea.”

“As it happens,” T’Challa’s serene expression gave way to something far warmer. “Someone I respect offered me a similar idea, and I think between us, we can make it happen.”

The next ten minutes the conversation fired back and forth between Tony and T’Challa at increasing speeds. Both men seemed to have very definitive ideas of what needed to happen, and while Steve appreciated the effort, he had reservations.

“You’re really quiet over there, Capcicle,” Tony commented, pulling him back to their debate. “Care to read us into your objections?”

Besides the fact the plan was necessary at all… “Natasha is a very private person. It cost her a lot to dump her entire history on the web, and she paid for that and is still paying for that.”

“We’re aware, that’s why this foundation idea supports her and the things she’s done…”

“But that’s just it,” Steve spread his hands. “She works in the shadows, if we start shining a light on just what she does there—that could point people at ways to find her.” He locked gazes with Tony. “It was a risk when she was with us, and that was when SHIELD kept scrubbing her out of the news footage. There are multiple governments hunting her, and taking the diplomatic approach to get them off her back—that’s great. But they aren’t the only ones.”

He shouldn’t have to explain this to Tony, and the sober look in his eyes expressed his understanding. “The more we tell them about what she does…

“…the more places others will have to look for her.” T’Challa finished slowly, his own expression growing grave.

“More or less, we mean well…” God did they mean well, but Nat thought three to five steps ahead and they had to do the same thing here. “So we tell the world she busts human traffickers and the foundation for women to help them repair their lives in the aftermath is a fantastic idea—but doesn’t that also tell not only the traffickers that she could be coming for them, and people like Ross that to catch her—just do this? Are we giving them a roadmap for taking her?”

Because he wasn’t going to do that. There _had_ to be another way.

Tony fell back against the sofa with a sigh. “I hate that you’re right.”

“As do I.” T’Challa frowned. “I had not considered that in trying to help her we may remove the very security that has allowed her to remain undetected this long.”

“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. He’d put her in a brilliant red, white, and blue uniform and trumpet her name from the rooftops if it would keep her safe—but her world hadn’t been like theirs, ever. Their actions—all of their actions—had cost her. They didn’t have the right to take any more. Especially without her input.

“Then we let the world do it,” Tony said, clapping his hands together. “There’s already a fan movement in France. We keep feeding the positive stories already out there to the press, to the committee, and we keep reminding them.”

“Very well. Then I will leave you to your day, Captain, and I will see you at the U.N. Mr. Stark?”

“Tony,” he said. “If we’re going to be conspiring, we might as well be on a first name basis.”

“Until then…”

The transmission ended, and Steve rubbed a hand over his beard. “He knows she’s here.”

“Yep.” Tony pushed up from the sofa. “And you know, I don’t care. He knows. We know he knows. He knows, we know, he knows. But none of us are admitting it. We have a thousand other problems, he’s not one.”

No, T’Challa wasn’t. He’d been a damn good ally to them, with little or no reason to do what he’d done.

“Hey Friday—check out that fanclub. I really wanna know if they have t-shirts.”

“Should I order you some if they do, Boss?”

Tony smirked. “Oh hell yes, and make sure to get some in Barnes’ and Cap’s sizes, too.”

Steve shook his head. “Since I’m up here, Wanda’s heading back in a few days.”

“Yep,” Tony said with a nod. “Already first on my list with the committee. Sliding it in there, she qualifies under the blanket exemption they gave the rest of the team because a, she was in Leipzig supporting you, and b, she hadn’t accepted a different deal.”

“Still working on Clint’s ankle monitor?”

Tony poured himself a cup of coffee and made a face. “Sort of.”

Rising, Steve slid his hands into his pockets and studied him. “Sort of?”

“Well, don’t get me wrong—Legolas deserves to be as free as you or Barnes. But—he’s still healing and that leg needs a lot of time and effort to not only mend, but rehabilitate. The ankle monitor means when Red disappears, like she just did, he doesn’t go haring off after her.”

“But shouldn’t that be his choice?” Not that Steve disagreed with him. Telling Clint Nat had gone _after_ Clint called him to find out why the hell she wasn’t answering her phone could definitely have gone better. He should have looped him in sooner, but his presence at the Compound kept him at a distance and his family had been visiting.

“Sure, and in a few weeks when he’s more solidly on the mend, it’ll move right to the top of my list.” Tony waved him off. “Now go away, see Nat—I’m going to the meeting and we’ll do our best to not call you in today.”

“Thanks Tony.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tony called after him, with a half-smile. “Really—don’t mention it. You get the day with the hot redhead and I get the UN. Really not sure what I did wrong in my life.”

Steve didn’t answer, because Tony was already off his mind probably on one of the hundred other tasks he juggled. They really needed to be doing more to help him out. Back on his floor, he half-expected to find Nat and Bucky waiting for him or even asleep. They weren’t in the sitting room, and the doors to his room and Buck’s were open.

He made it three steps from Nat’s door when he caught the sound of water and a very distinctive set of moans beneath the flow of the shower. A smile pulled wide across his mouth as he listened for probably a little longer than he should have, but dammit…good for them. Pivoting, he headed back to his room to grab his sketchpad.

He definitely needed something to do or the pressure of his zipper was going to get even more uncomfortable. The current picture of Nat he’d been working on was almost finished, but he flipped the page and concentrated on a new piece.

The hint of a smirk playing on her lips when she’d called him hot earlier coupled with the open admiration in her eyes was the kind of thing that used to make him stutter, probably because women didn’t look at him that way. At least, they hadn’t before the serum and he didn’t mind that so much. After, he hadn’t known what to do with the attention.

But Natasha?

Having her look at him like that settled him in a way he couldn’t begin to describe. He wanted to earn the smile in her eyes, and be worthy of the trust her openness implied. Didn’t hurt that he adored his angel. Focusing on the sketch forming beneath his pencil kept him from listening to them.

When she wandered out of the bedroom several minutes later, moving with a kind of boneless grace, hair damp, and wearing Bucky’s t-shirt, Steve wanted to stare and memorize the softness she so often kept sheltered behind armored exterior life had beaten onto her. Behind her, a shirtless Bucky followed and the cocky grin on his face couldn’t disguise his own ease. The change between them was electric, and heat rushed to his face.

From the moment he’d realized what could lie between them, it had eaten away at him. Then, understanding what had been stolen from them? He couldn’t have been more furious on their behalf. If they found a way to reconnect some of those dots—if she’d managed to let him despite the tripwires he and Buck had seemed to trigger—yeah, he was happy for them. He wasn’t jealous, but damn…he couldn’t help but be a little bit envious.

Just a little.

“Feeling better?” He tracked her sinuous stroll as she crossed the room toward him.

“Oh yes,” she murmured. The fact she made a beeline only made his smile grow.

Her eyes shone as she nudged his sketchbook aside and settled onto his lap as if she had the right to be there. Setting the sketchpad on the table, he slid an arm around her. She was soft and warm, and wearing absolutely nothing under that t-shirt.

Looping her arms around his neck, she smiled. “No call out?”

“No Angel, no call out.” With the bruise on her cheek and the ugly necklace of them around her throat, she was even more his warrior angel. Fierce and beautiful, soft and warm, tough, and brilliant. She curled right into him and settled her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped her closer. “T’Challa just wanted to let us know he saw you.”

“Oops,” she didn’t even try to play it off. “We didn’t talk about the job yet or I would have told you.”

“I know,” he soothed, running his hand down her back and not quite letting his fingers linger near her ass. The shirt hit her mid thigh when she was standing, but it definitely didn’t cover everything while she was settled in his lap.

“Food?” Bucky called from the kitchen, and Steve glanced over to find him lifting the pastry boxes. “Stevie got you some of your favorites, doll.” He’d grabbed himself another shirt apparently.

“Hmm, I have both of my favorites right here,” she said, and the slow smile warming her lips just made him grin. He’d never seen Natasha drunk, not really. Tipsy once, and definitely pleasantly buzzed a couple of times. But this soft, cuddling, and relaxed woman was a little bit of a revelation. He’d gotten to know so many sides of her—the cool agent, the defiant fighter, the indifferent spy—though he doubted she’d ever been truly indifferent—the teasing friend, the matchmaker, the teacher, the fierce protector, and the loving aunt. So many different facets to her personality, but the warm pliant woman he’d gotten to kiss a few nights before and cuddled now?

“You need to eat,” he told her. “There’s meat strudels and paczki, all fresh baked this morning.”

Her eyes lit up. “Be careful Rogers, or I might think you’re trying to get on my softer side.”

“You mean I’m not there already?” He raised his eyebrows. “Because that sounds like a challenge to me.”

The laughter rolling out of her lit him up. Bucky brought the boxes over with plates, napkins and fresh coffee. To Steve’s immense pleasure, Nat stayed right where she was, though she did poke Bucky with a toe. He grinned at her as he loaded her plate.

Buck filled a plate for him, and for a few minutes, he savored balancing Nat against his thighs while eating one handed. Twice her gaze went to his sketchbook, but she didn’t ask and she didn’t try to peek. He wasn’t keeping the drawings a secret, but they were mostly for him.

For now.

While they ate, Bucky filled her in on the pardon, the rules, and how it would likely play out. “Essentially, I’m back in the army. But they have agreed that it will be for terminal leave only and no recalls to active duty.”

“How do you feel about it?” Nat had threaded her fingers with Steve’s where he rested his hand over her hip, and she traced her thumb back and forth along the side.

“I’m…I think it’s too easy,” Bucky admitted, and Steve frowned. “But I also want it over. Don’t need it hanging over Stevie’s head or Stark’s.”

“Buck—you were a prisoner of war, and I know it doesn’t change the fact you did the things you did. That they were your hands,” Steve continued, aware of the whole argument. “But that means it’s even more important the rest of the world acknowledges you were a prisoner. You were forced to do these things, and they had to wipe you repeatedly to keep you that way.”

“Yeah Punk,” Bucky said with a crooked grin. “I know. Still feels weird.”

He understood that, and from the way Natasha studied Bucky, she got it, too. The conversation shifted to Steve’s isolation and health scare. He really didn’t want to walk her through the gory details, but one long look into those deep green eyes and he explained everything—the base, the walking sludge creatures, the fact that they’d most likely been human, his exposure and Dr. Cho’s subsequent clearing of him after multiple tests. At the last, Natasha’s eyes narrowed.

“How much blood did she take?” The whisper quiet question seemed far more menacing than if she’d shouted.

“Don’t worry, Angel. Tony already locked all her research down.” He smoothed a hand over her leg, savoring the silk of her skin under his palm.

“And she didn’t smuggle out a sample for some private research? He’s sure of that?”

Steve paused, but this was Tony… “Nat—Tony took care of it.”

“Hmm, he’s nearly as paranoid as I am.” But the tightening lines between her brows threatened to wash away her idle demeanor and he wasn’t ready to see her slip away, not yet.

“Probably more when it comes to the science stuff. But we’ll make sure—later. Okay?” Though, considering it, the idea niggled in the back of his mind. Helen had been good to them, all of them. He didn’t want to mistrust her.

“If she did, we’ll take care of it,” Bucky said with a kind of relaxed confidence he used to say when they didn’t have enough money to pay for Steve’s medicine. While he hadn’t always told Steve how he made it happen, it happened.

“Helen’s not bad for a doctor,” Natasha admitted, which was tantamount to an endorsement from her. “But self-replicating bioorganic material that makes zombies…that’s not good.”

“No, and I don’t think we’re any closer to tracking down where it’s coming from. Roxxon is playing coy, and Talbot—he’s the general who gave us the info on the base—he’s not offering up any answers.”

Nat traced a pattern against his hand. “I’ll find out what they’re up to.”

“Hey.” He gave her a squeeze. “We.”

“Yes, Captain sir,” she drawled, then smiled at him. “We will…but it will be mostly me.” Her nose wrinkled impishly. “You can take them down after I line them up.”

Chuckling, he shook his head. “I’m not sure whether I should be enamored or worried.”

“Who says you can’t be both?” The dare in her eyes had him leaning forward to press a kiss to the tip of her nose.

“You’re right. I can be both…” At least the robots took far less time to explain. “Server outage, that’s what Tony said, forced reboot, coughed out some old code and woke up the drones.” The fact computers could even fall back on something that wasn’t supposed to be active was the kind of random danger inherent with the world’s reliance on technology.

“But a kind of one time thing a real wipe of all those systems should take care of.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully, still teasing her nails against his hand and then his arm. It was nice, soothing. “Okay. I can accept that. And Wanda?”

“Wanda said she had given it a lot of thought, a part of her wants to stay in Sokovia, doing what she has been. But she’s lonely, she misses the team and misses being a part of something. Since all of us were cleared…” He winced, but she nuzzled a kiss to the corner of his mouth before teasing at his beard with her nose gently. “Sorry Angel.”

“No, it’s fine. I know what you meant. Since Ross’ ouster and the committee cleared the rest of the Avengers, she should come back. It will probably make Vision very happy—well as happy as he gets anyway.”

“You know,” Buck said from where he sprawled on the sofa, eyes half closed an arm under his head. “I don’t get that. He’s a robot right?”

“Well…” Steve frowned. “It’s—yes and no?” He glanced at Nat. Even if he had been there when Thor sent a rush of lightning through AI infused being in the cradle, he wasn’t really sure how to define it.

“He’s an amalgamation of Tony, Bruce, the mind stone, an AI called JARVIS, and…” She made a face. “Ultron. But he’s not any just one of those things and I don’t even know if the mind stone constitutes a personality, it’s a dangerous item but it’s fused to him and seems to be neutral or at least—neutralized by him.”

“But _what_ is he?” Bucky stared at her.

“He’s…Vision.”

“Natalia,” Bucky frowned. “Threat assessment?”

“He’s an android with a synthetic body comprised of vibranium built with a tissue regenerator thanks to Helen Cho’s cradle, and when Thor used lightning to super charge it, something—else happened. As for threat assessment? Be nice to Wanda. She’s the only one I know that can affect him.”

Bucky frowned and Steve squeezed Natasha gently. Vision hadn’t truly engaged at the airport, and he’d wondered why the android held back. But if what Natasha said was true, it would have forced Wanda to fight him and Vision did seem very fond of her. Still, he worried about Bucky needing the threat assessment on an _ally_.

She stroked his arm and shook her head. “I think the same things, Steve. It’s—it’s who we are.”

Her answer must have satisfied him, because Bucky let his eyes close again. “Your turn Natalia,” he murmured.

When she’d finished her food, he set her plate aside with his and then slid his arm around her legs and pulled her sideways into his lap so she could curl up again. Nat kept her story light on the details. She went to Morocco to meet the negotiator for the kidnappers, and she honored the father’s wishes to agree to any amount, but it turned out one of them was SVR, and it required a change in plans. It required a little creativity, but she managed to get the boy out and he was now safe at home with his father.

Throughout her tale, he focused on the bruises on her throat. There were lighter ones along her arms. Even her knuckles showed a trace of green. Some of her bruises had healed, not the worst of them. But enough

“I’m glad he’s safe,” was all Steve said though. He hadn’t missed the way her eyes darkened when she described finding the boy or the uptilt to her lips at how he listened and helped to rescue himself.

She’d been the child no one rescued. The child. The teenager. The woman. She’d had to rescue herself because no one came to find her.

“Hey,” Natasha’s soft whisper pulled him from the dark path he’d been wandering down.

Focusing on her, he smiled. “I’m here.”

“Yeah?” She scraped her nails lightly through his beard. It was an awful lot like being petted, but he didn’t mind it.

Trailing his fingers lightly along her thigh, he nodded. “Been a long few days without you, Angel.”

“I missed you, too. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you got the all clear.”

“You had a job to do, I understood.” And he had. He’d have liked to have gone with her or at least been there to say goodbye—especially after what happened in Queens. “Nat…about…about Tony.”

She didn’t slow her soft stroking of his beard, but he had the full weight of her attention.

“You don’t owe me any explanations. Ever.” He licked his lips. “I’ll ask, I know I will just like you do. I want to know about you, I want to know everything you’ll share. But you don’t have to say a word. He’s your friend, you’re right. I think I know how important he is to you.”

To be honest, maybe he didn’t know exactly. Clint he understood. Clint was to Nat what Bucky was to him. Their relationship roots began at different points in their life, but Clint was her family every bit as much as Bucky was his.

“I’m sorry. I made you feel like I didn’t trust you. I acted like you owed me something, and the truth is you don’t. You never have. You never will.” He blew out a breath. He’d been sitting on that for three days. Every conversation he’d had with Bucky had some flavor of it come into play. Not that most of their conversations didn’t eventually circle back to Nat, but they were both—Bucky was trying to find his way back and Steve was learning his way around. Sometimes it felt like the blind leading the blind, and other times, one or the other understood something about her so clearly, they couldn’t unsee it.

Buck had seen the way she froze up, that their intimacy was almost too much at times. If Steve spent too long thinking why that was so, he’d want to kill something. When Bucky described taking those men apart after what they’d done to her—Steve hadn’t found an ounce of criticism in him for the choices he made. Yes, he’d still been the Soldier, and he’d still been there to do a job that had required Nat, but his justice on her behalf had nothing to do with orders and everything to do with who Bucky was.

Trust—Natasha didn’t expect anyone to trust her and he could lay the blame at any number of feet for that belief, but the fact he and Bucky stomped right onto that landmine was theirs alone.

“I don’t want to be separated from you again and have you believing we wouldn’t be there for you,” he finished finally. “That you have to hide yourself in anyway. I’m not perfect Nat. Never going to be. I’m stubborn, hardheaded, sometimes I can’t see other people’s viewpoints even when they are entitled to disagree, and yeah, I’m always ready to fight. Probably not my most admirable quality, but you mean more to me than anything else. I need you to know that.”

Somewhere along the way, she stopped petting his beard and slid her hand down over his heart. Some distant part of him knew damn well she was measuring his heart rate, she was checking that he told the truth. It was just a part of her, a part she needed to survive for so long. “My turn now?”

“Sorry—just waited a while to be able to tell you that.”

Her smile softened her face and she licked her lips once before saying, “This may surprise you, but I’m not very good at relationships.”

Yes, that would surprise him. “You’re good with people.”

“I’m good with managing expectations,” she told him without an ounce of self-deprecation. “I can count on one hand how many actual relationships I have had—or at least that I remember having.”

She made a face, and then said, “I can’t believe I’m about to use a Star Wars reference to explain this but…do you remember when we watched the prequels?”

Wary, he nodded.

“Do you remember when Anakin said that—attachment was forbidden to the Jedi, and possession was forbidden, but compassion which he defined as unconditional love—splitting hairs there by the way—was essential to a Jedi’s life.”

He was almost afraid to answer that question. When _Star Wars_ came up in the group, it could lead to some really off topic and heated discussions. “I remember—he had a crush on Padme and wanted to get in her pants.”

A sudden smile lit her up, and he reveled in the sight of it. “You have been hanging out with me for too long.”

“Not even.” He gave her a little squeeze. “Finish what you were saying.” Before they diverted off topic.

“I’m no Jedi,” she intoned the words playfully and he rolled his eyes, and then gave her a gentle pinch. Her eyes widened, and to his delight, she stuck out her tongue before continuing. “I was never allowed to get attached. From my earliest memories, we were taught don’t trust, don’t get attached, don’t get close—” She glanced at Bucky. “That he and I ever managed that—I have no idea how. But I know why they used me against him, and him against me.”

“Because you were attached.”

She nodded slowly. “I don’t let myself get attached. It’s too dangerous. Most of the time, I was never around people long enough to get attached. Then Clint…and Phil. They were some of the first that I can remember after I was out of the Red Room.”

Fifteen years or thereabouts she’d been free of the Red Room, but she’d never really gotten free because their shackles had still dictated her choices.

“Nick,” she said with a breath. “Then there was Tony…and I messed up with him. Pretty sure he was never going to trust me again. So when he did…I never wanted to screw that up. There was the team, and there was you. But I came close to screwing it up with you and…and I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I had.” She tugged at her hair. “Anyway—I’m saying this badly. But, I care about Tony. After Leipzig, I pretty much thought he’d written me off.”

What she didn’t say was that she thought they’d both written her off, but he heard it clearly.

“And I had to live with that. You know, I wasn’t okay with it, but I didn’t really have a choice.” She lowered her gaze and it struck him again, just how young she looked when she let down her walls. The serum they gave her might heal her body and help her retain her youth, but her soul, battered and hidden away behind the myriad of barricaded and blocked walls had somehow managed to hold onto an innocence they’d tried to rip away from her. “Then you guys showed up in Switzerland.”

“And you were _displeased._ ” Steve tacked on, earning another brilliant smile.

“Yeah.” Then after a soft kiss, she whispered, “I am so glad you did, even if all I wanted to do was leave and put distance between us…I couldn’t believe that you all came. Clint—you know him I got. He always drags me back when I try to disappear. But you and Tony? After everything?”

“You know better now, right?”

She nodded. “Not sure I’m totally used to that accountability and people wanting to know where I am and check ins…I’m just used to being alone.”

Despite everything—even understanding the major shift in the dynamic between she and Bucky—he was still loathe to ask the next question, but he hadn’t lied when he said he wanted to know everything. Wanted to understand. “Do you want that? For us to just—back off and let you come and go without a word?” Because he’d try, if it was what she truly wanted, but he didn’t think he would be able to.

And Bucky definitely wouldn’t go for it. That wasn’t a question.

“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t want that. I’m—” She looked down, as if searching for the right words.

“Hey,” he murmured, tucking a finger under her chin and nudging her eyes up. “No explanations remember?” He did not want her pulling herself apart for him. For anyone really. He—he wanted her just the way she was. Every facet of her.

“I want to—I’m attached, Steve.”

The words drilled right through him.

“To you—to James…I’m attached.” She couldn’t quite play it off with effortless ease as she might have in another situation, instead she just stared at him open and uncertain. “Clint’s the closest I’ve ever been to someone that—that I’d burn the world down for. Tony’s—I’d take apart anyone who came for Tony.” She had. She’d gone after Ross. “But I’d die for you and I’d die for James.”

“I know,” he told her as gently as possible, then coiled his arms around her and pulled her in. She buried her face against his throat; he closed his eyes. “I know, Angel. You did that when you dumped all your covers out there and tore your past wide open.”

She’d died for him that day and he hadn’t realized it then, but he knew it now.

“And I’m damn attached to you, too,” he added with a whisper. “But you don’t get to die. That’s non-negotiable.”

“That goes double for the two of you,” she scolded in return and he smiled.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She sighed. “Okay, so maybe we’re not so terrible at this.”

And he chuckled. “No, I think we’re getting the communication part down.”

With a light tug, she pulled back and he loosened his grip. “I think you had another part down.” Then she pressed her lips to his and he opened his mouth to welcome her kiss. He could taste the coffee and hints of dessert off her lips, and the hint of her toothpaste.

The long, slow glide of her tongue on his, and the gentle drag of her fingers through his hair kept him close, chasing every contact. He nibbled a line of kisses from her mouth to her throat, and as carefully as he could he kissed the shadow of bruises there.

“Angel, will you let me take you dancing tonight?” He didn’t know how, but—he wanted to and he wanted to dance with her.

She lifted her head, meeting his gaze. “I can—I can calibrate the veil and yes, but—you don’t think people aren’t going to notice you?”

“Not the veil, I want to see you.” He stroked a curl away from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “We’ll figure out something here—but get dressed up and let me take you dancing.” His face was warm enough, he knew he had to be blushing but he didn’t care.

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Well—short of tattooing your name on my ass, yes. Anything.”

Hell. That image sent all his blood flowing south, and he had to focus to get his brain cells back on board. Standing, he cradled her and she raised her brows. Bucky had given way to gentle snores, and since he hadn’t slept in days, Steve left him there. He’d come find them when he woke up.

Carrying her toward his bedroom, Natasha rewarded him with a sultry smile, “Really, Captain?”

“Behave,” he murmured, ignoring the fact that his ears were on fire. “Not quite ready for that yet.” No matter how much his body ached to take it further, he wanted it to be right—to be special and just about them. Not about making up after a fight or grasping at the few hours they have to themselves.

“But the making out is still okay, right?” Her wide eyes demanded he say yes, and he grinned.

“Absolutely.” He wouldn’t trade any of the intimacy they’d discovered so far for anything else.

“Well that’s all right then. Especially since you want to dance with me.”

“Hopefully I don’t break your toes,” he muttered as he set her on the bed, and she shifted onto her knees before sitting back on her heels.

“I have very tough feet,” she informed him primly. “And you will have me as a partner. You’re going to be fine.”

He really loved the sound of that. Going to the drawer next to the bed, he opened it up and fished around. He’d had to get it from the Compound, but he’d set it in the drawer after getting back. Finding what he was looking for, he closed his hand around it and closed the drawer before facing her.

Taking in the sight of her, flushed face, curling red hair, bright green eyes, dressed in only an oversized t-shirt and kneeling on his bed, and it staggered him. The picture she made… “I want to draw you sometime.”

“Like your French girls?”

He blinked.

“ _Titanic_ ,” she said, waving off his confusion.

Oh. “If that means you’ll pose nude,” he even managed to say it without blushing too badly this time.

“Anything, I told you.” She hooked her fingers under the shirt and pulled it off. And Steve blew out a long, slow breath. “Where do you want me?”

Anywhere and everywhere were on the tip of his tongue, but he shook his head. She had bruises elsewhere, but they were fading. She was all lean, corded muscle and soft curves that belied the strength below them. Her skin was pale, but there were hints of freckles over the rise of her breasts, and her nipples were a sweet pinkish color.

“No?”

“No—I don’t know if I could do you justice Angel…but I’d like to try.” He wanted to trace every line on her until he’d memorized them. Closing the distance, he stroked a finger down her cheek. “Close your eyes?”

She arched a brow, but closed her eyes without an ounce of hesitation. The level of trust that she gave him was humbling, and he had zero intention of ever letting her down again. Carefully, he opened his palm and straightened the chain before draping it over her head. The metal had warmed in his hand but she still shivered and her nipples peaked. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of staring at her.

“I never had anyone to give these to,” he told her. “But I want you to wear them. I know you might not be able to all the time, but when you can—I just like knowing they’ll be there if I’m not.” He released the tags and let them hang between her breasts.

Natasha opened her eyes and looked down at the dog tags. He’d gotten them a few months before everything went to hell at the Triskelion in a box of his things the SHIELD had _graciously_ returned to him after he woke from the ice.

“I had those on when I went into the ice,” he told her, sitting down on the bed next to her. “Earned those the day Dr. Erskine signed me up.”

She was tracing her thumb over his name on the metal. Despite their age, they hadn’t suffered the wear and tear of the last century—just like him.

“I thought I was going to give them to Peggy, but it never seemed right. Then—then the ice, but they’re yours.” He lifted his gaze to find her staring at him. “Will you wear them? For me?”

Dropping the tags, she leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands before kissing him. It was a gentle kiss, but it stole his breath as she massaged his lips with hers, not demanding a damn thing and yet when he stroked his tongue along the seam of her lips, she parted them in welcome.

One arm around her, he kept his hand firmly planted on her side, very aware of the bare flesh beneath his fingers as they exchanged a series of long, slow, heated kisses and when she finally lifted her head and smiled, he had to ask, “That’s a yes, right?”

Her grin grew. “Yes.”

Exulted, he nuzzled another kiss to her cheek, then her ear, then bit down gently just behind her ear and she let out that same languid sigh she had on the roof. Studying her lowered lids, open and soft expression and swollen lips, he whispered, “Just like this—this is how I want to draw you.”

“Not going to tell you no, Steve…should I lie down? Sit up? Put me where you want me…”

Right next to him for the rest of his life and he was working damn hard on that.

“Make yourself comfortable—should I turn up the heat a little?” Her nipples were still very pebbled and peaked.

“I’m fine,” she reminded him. “Russian you know.”

“Hmm,” and he enjoyed the show she put on as she turned and crawled up to sprawl against his pillows, she settled on her back, one hand hooked around the dog tags, and the other under her head as she lay half on her side. Nothing hidden, and he trailed his gaze over the abdomen to where the scar puckered her flesh—and then down to her hips and the smooth skin between her thighs.

He’d known—sort of but he’d never actually studied it before.

“Laser,” she said quietly, and he jerked his gaze up to hers. “I used to shave, then wax, now lasers. Technology is a wonderful thing. But yes, the carpet does actually match the drapes when I let it grow in.”

His ears were flaming this time and her devilish little smile promised him she’d done it on purpose. Well—in all fairness, he had been staring. “I’ll just get my sketchpad.”

“I’ll be right here,” she told him. “Waiting for you.”

Dancing. He reminded himself. That evening, he’d set up something, maybe on one of the other floors. They had space in the common room when they’d had parties at the Tower. Dance with her, spend some time and really romance her—more talking, more kissing, and more getting to know each other.

He was going to do this right.

Bucky was still snoring when he retrieved his sketchbook, and Steve grinned at him. All the tense lines in his face had melted away. Nat did that for him. She did that for Steve, too. When he got back to the bedroom, he found her just where he’d left her and she met his gaze with another smile.

Yes. He was doing it exactly right and sketching her nude totally didn’t undo any of his intentions.

No matter what his body yelled at him.

She deserved the best and he would damn well make sure she got it.

“Comfortable?” he asked before dragging a chair over to the corner of the bed to get the best angle. The light coming in the window was just enough to highlight the varying strands of red in her hair.

“Hmm-hmm,” she intoned. “Be better if you were right here with me, but I can totally enjoy the view from here, too—you know especially if you did a girl a solid and took off your shirt, too.”

Yep. Definitely teasing him.

After setting the sketchpad down, he stripped off his shirt, and then shucked off his jeans leaving only his briefs before sitting back in the chair. His arousal was painfully obvious right now, but the way her eyes lit up told him it was worth it.

“Better?”

“Oh, I’ll say. Draw away, Steve. I’m just going to unashamedly ogle you and imagine all the things I’m going to do to you someday.”

His mind stuttered at that image, but he settled the sketchbook on his lap and flipped to a clean page. “Then I hope you don’t mind if I imagine it's my hands on you as I draw you.”

“Not even a little,” the husky note in her voice sending the faintest of tremors to his hand.

Dancing Rogers.

Just remember the dancing.

He would do this _right_.


	20. Masks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date night--and yes, it's very fluffy

**Chapter Twenty**

**Masks**

**Natasha**

 

 

Natasha snapped her eyes open, and blinked slowly. Awareness crept along the edges of consciousness, but it took a moment for where she was to sink in. She was curled up on her side, alone in Steve’s bed. A blanket tucked around her, and a note lying on the pillow next to her. Where it had been early afternoon when Steve carried her in there, the day had grown late, but the sun hadn’t quite set yet. Dragging herself upward, she ran her fingers through her hair then dropped her hand to the chain with his dog tags around her neck before picking up the note.

 

_Hi Angel,_

_I hope you slept well. If you found this, I’m not quite back yet. But I will be soon. No, not called out on a mission. Food is in the kitchen, just turn on the coffee maker, and then take your time and get ready. I’ll see you soon._

_Steve_

 

A shiver raced up her spine and she fell back against the pillows and stretched. There was an impossibly languid feeling unfolding in her muscles. She had slept well. Soundly. Not a bad dream in sight. That she didn’t even remember falling asleep promised her she’d been too relaxed to even struggle against it.

She glanced over to the chair Steve had sat in. The t-shirt she’d worn earlier was folded neatly in the seat, and there was a second note. Pushing up, she crawled over to sit on the edge of the bed and pick up the note.

 

_Stole Bucky to give me a hand. Did you know you have the tiniest of snores when you’re sound asleep? It’s adorable._

_Steve_

She snorted, and shook her head. After slipping the shirt on, she padded out to the sitting room. The whole suite seemed quiet—the whole floor really. The time said it was just five-thirty, so not late and the last gasp of the sun was visible in the fiery red edge on the horizon. There was another note at the coffee maker and she grinned.

 

_Eat light. There’s still paczki leftover, and more strudel. Dinner at 8._

_Steve_

Flicking the button on the coffee maker, she stretched everything—her toes, her legs, her arms, and her back. Looking at her stack of notes, she just grinned. Eight. That gave her a couple of hours to get ready.

She needed a dress.

Opening the boxes, she picked out one of the meat packed strudels and grinned. It was a little sweeter on the pastry side than she typically liked, but the fact Steve remembered them from that first very tense afternoon in Switzerland was pretty special.

Nibbling it, she wandered over to the flowers on the table—and another note.

 

_So we didn’t get to talk about this, but Bucky looked up flowers that meant we’re sorry and we miss you hence the carnations and roses. We did miss you, Angel._

_A lot._

_Steve_

 

Adding the note to her collection, she began a slow stroll around the kitchen, sitting room and finally checked her room.

Yep—there was a note on the bed. One of them had set her carryon inside the room, the photo static veil lay in its box on the dresser and the wig had been placed next to it, and smoothed down.

The boys were spoiling her.

Padding over to the bed, she picked up the note.

 

_I’m looking forward to dancing with you. Small confession. I don’t know how to dance. Was always waiting for the right partner. Teach me?_

_Steve_

 

She swallowed at the reference. The right partner.

Her.

Fuck, she’d never been anyone’s right _anything_. The flutter in her stomach unsettled her, but she turned to the closet and stared at the scarcity of clothes present—mostly work out gear, tact suits, and a few business suits for her covers. Leaving the Tower dressed for business gave her a plausible excuse.

But nothing to dress up in for a date—hell even the shoes were all black or brown or navy blue. They screamed practicality, not dressed up. Sucking on her lower lip, she debated what she’d had in her wardrobe on her floor. Most of her clothes had been thrust into boxes or just tossed cavalierly in a pile.

Then again she’d made more of less when on assignment. Most marks only cared about how much skin she showed, not whether her dress was couture or pressed correctly. Sometimes they cared, but most of the time she could keep their attention on her and not her clothes—but Steve wasn’t a mark.

He would _never_ be a mark.

That meant she needed to dress for him. The blank feeling sliding her through her left her chilled. How did she dress for a date that was just—a date? He wanted to dance, that meant dress, something loose and flowing, but long or short skirt? Maybe shorter—so he could see her legs. They needed to see them to match movements. Not figure hugging, that would be too uncomfortable after a while.

She rubbed a palm against the shirt, and curled her toes.

Dammit.

After grabbing a pair of shorts out of the drawer and yanking them on, she stowed Steve’s notes safely in the top drawer of her nightstand before making a beeline for the coffee. “Friday, is my floor secure?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Romanoff. Repairs are currently being performed on your floor.”

“Blyad!” She stared at her coffee. Damn, she wanted to call Laura. She was halfway to her phone when she hesitated. Calling Laura to ask for advice about what to wear on a date was not an emergency. Calling her and putting her at risk for advice someone Natasha’s age _shouldn’t_ need was just plain selfish.

Then again, she could call Clint—but he’d probably just laugh at her, after he finished ripping her a new asshole for taking off. No, she owed Clint the chance to yell at her. But not right now. Not until she figured this out.

“Is there something I can help you with, Ms. Romanoff?” Friday sounded almost tentative.

“Unless you can get me the perfect dress in the next two hours—then no.”

A holo screen formed over the table. “What type of dress are we looking for?”

Coiling the chain around her fingers, she stared at the screen. “Dark green, blue, or red. Nothing black or brown. No yellows or oranges either. Something flowy—the skirt should be just above the knee, something that flatters but isn’t skin tight…” As she spoke images populated, rearranged, then filled in again as some were eliminated. “Something—provocative, but not overtly sexy.”

Steve may like her body but he wasn’t interested in her for just her body. The fact he was still keeping a very definitive line regarding sex made that clear. He was attracted, no doubt about that, but he wanted to date her.

When had anyone wanted to date _her?_ Her covers got asked out and had dates. But not her. Not Natasha. Well, Tony had asked, but they were friends. 

Curling her toes, she studied the dresses. “No strapless.”

More images vanished.

“No long sleeves either.”

The selection reordered as Friday eliminated several options.

She studied them, cataloging what she liked and didn’t like about them. Not dressing for a mark meant she had to figure out how to dress herself in a way Steve would enjoy but that wouldn’t be too much.

So much harder than it sounded.

“Wait…enhance third from the left, fourth row.” The screen reordered and enlarged the image she’d selected.

Hunter green, it was an asymmetrical baby doll dress with a double layered ruffle detail for both the bodice and the skirt.

“Can you spin this so I can see the back?” Friday complied and Natasha leaned forward to study the way it hung, slightly lower with the rear of the skirt brushing right at the back of her knees. The asymmetry would provide a teasing look of her left thigh above the knee, but cover the right almost demurely.

It was sweet and sexy, and perfect. She wouldn’t be able to do stockings or garters with that cut, but her legs weren’t bad bare, and they couldn’t leave the Tower, which gave her a little more freedom in her options.

The price tag was a little challenging, but she could afford it. “How soon could we get this? Some matching shoes…and a strapless bra and thong set in the same color? You have my sizes on file, right?”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff. I can have all of that delivered within the hour.”

The thong was important. Despite some discomfort, she wanted no lines on the dress. If the color matched in the front, even a spin wouldn’t tease much—and considering he’d spent at least an hour that she knew of sketching her nude, she wasn’t terribly worried about that anyway.

It was hardly the first time Steve had gotten a glimpse of her. They’d had to change in front of each other before, and he’d looked after wounds when she’d gotten them. Hell, he and James had both stripped and changed her at least twice that she could remember.

Still…she wanted the tease to be something fun, not raunchy.

“Great, I’ll give you the account to charge it from.”

“Mr. Stark has authorized you access to the Tower account to cover any expenses—”

“No,” Natasha said, running her thumb over one of the dog tags. Tony was not paying for her dress for a date with Steve. The man was generous to a fault no matter how he tried to play it, but she had already taken too much advantage of his kindness. She rattled off the numbers to Friday and the AI agreed, almost reluctantly.

“Let me know when it gets here?”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff. I’ll have it placed in the elevator to be sent directly to your floor.”

“Thank you, Friday.”

“Happy to help,” Friday assured her. “May I offer you any other assistance Ms. Romanoff?”

“Just some music, please?”

“Anything in particular?”

“Something with a little beat…” Because the most unsettling set of nerves were rippling through her system and she needed to get her pulse and respiration under control.

“Of course.” One of her workout mixes started playing and she closed her eyes as the dance beat hit.

An hour later, Friday paused the music to let her know her dress had arrived. She’d kept herself busy going over her files, checking messages, and sending one to Isaiah with an update on Guerda’s status. The work grounded her, but she kept toying with Steve’s dog tags. Crossing to the elevator, she skipped a couple of steps as one of Coldplay’s hits filled the air. The song was a bit too on the nose.

The dress looked even better on the mobile rack along with the other items, and a surprising box. When she opened it, she had to laugh.

 

_Too much?_

                                                                                                                            _Steve_

 

It was a gorgeous emerald choker and a matching pair of earrings.

“Ratting me out Friday?”

“Not at all, Ms. Romanoff,” she said primly. “Captain Rogers merely asked me for some advice on what might work with your outfit for the evening.”

“Uh huh.” But the stupid grin on her face refused to go away. “He didn’t see the dress did he?”

“Absolutely not.” Friday was emphatic.

“Thank you, Friday…and crank up the music will you?” She carried her purchases into the bedroom, letting her hips roll to the music as she hung up her items. Door closed, she danced into the shower for a quick rinse. She debated washing her hair, but if she did, she’d have to dry it and press it flat. Steve seemed to like her curls and they were definitely more casual her than put together and ready for business.

By the time she was standing in front of a mirror wrapped only in a towel, the music had segued to the opera from _The Fifth Element_. She smirked at herself. Clint was right; she definitely had eclectic taste. Gathering her hair up into a clip, she pin it to the top of her head, then inspected her throat.

The mottled marks were still visible as finger shapes, but they’d definitely faded. Not enough to vanish. The choker wasn’t huge, but it would cover some of it. Did she cover it with make up or not?

Considering where she’d like his lips to end up, a lot of cosmetics probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

Minimal would be better.

It took her longer to get ready than it usually, but when she finished, she eyed herself in the mirror and the flutters in her system quieted. The smile on her lips was effortless. The emeralds were a perfect compliment to the green of her dress, and both made her eyes pop. She’d used minimal eye liner and mascara, skipping the eye shadow all together. The faded swelling let her cover most of the cheek bruise and she had to tilt her head a certain way to see it at all.

She’d pinned her curls up, so they cascaded over the damaged side of her face, which helped to camouflage it more. The earrings sparkled, dangling less than an eighth of an inch, and they wouldn’t tangle with her hair.

The music quieted and a knock on her bedroom door preceded James saying, “Are you decent, Natalia?”

“Never,” she retorted as she walked out of the bathroom to greet him. His eyes widened a fraction, and his mouth opened for a full ten seconds before he pursed his lips and whistled.

“Damn, doll.”

“You approve?” She did a little twirl, and chuckling at his frank admiration.

“Almost wishing you didn’t have plans…because I’d love to get you out of that.”

Natasha laughed. “Maybe next time.”

“Please?”

The hopeful note buoyed her flagging confidence.

“Is this going to be okay? Assuming you know his plans. I wasn’t sure…”

“It’s perfect Natalia.” He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Absolutely perfect—and you look like you.”

Blowing out a breath, she put a hand to her tummy. “It’s ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“I haven’t been this nervous since…” Well, the last time she was this nervous she’d been going to her very first formal assassination at an embassy under the nose of one of the world’s most vaunted security forces.

This was so _not_ that.

“Steve would adore you in a burlap sack and bare feet. You’re going to take his breath away.” Straightening, he closed the distance and traced the chain with Steve’s dog tags to lift them out from behind the bodice. Settling them against the front of the dress, he nodded slowly. “Better.”

Brushing her knuckles along his stubbly cheek, she smiled. “How are you?”

“My life is so much better for getting to see you like this.” His eyes were soft, and his smile even gentler. “And we need to get you off to your date…next night we’re free—will you spend it with me?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

“Good…gonna have to think of something to match this with.” He took her hand and lifted it to brush a kiss to her knuckles, before turning it over and kissing her palm. “Thank you for this morning.”

A shiver skated up her spine. “Pretty sure I should be thanking you.”

“Never have to thank me,” he told her, the corner of his mouth curling upward and her heart did the little double thump as if high fiving her ribcage. “That’s a memory I’m going to treasure.”

“Me too,” she leaned up on her toes, because even in her heels he was taller than she was. A brush of her lips to his. “I’m nervous.”

“Why?” He whispered, his expression sobering. “It’s Stevie…he’s the nervous one, not you.”

“I’ve never done this as me…and the last time I was this real with someone…someone not you. It…didn’t end well.”

“Doll, you can’t possibly think Steve would ever try to hurt you? He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.” James accepted her. All of her. The dark and twisting paths they’d followed put them almost on equal footing.

“It’s not that…” It wasn’t. Steve would never deliberately try to hurt her, that she believed.

“But?” James’ eyes narrowed. “Natalia? This isn’t like you.”

No it wasn’t, and she sighed.

Surprise filtered through his eyes. “Natalia, is this your first date?”

She grimaced, and then glanced away. “I’ve been on plenty of dates—as my covers.”

“With marks?” No judgment echoed in his tone. She didn’t even have to answer, she just looked at him and his expression gentled. “You’re going to be fine. I promise—Stevie’s been planning the perfect first date since we were kids.”

“But Steve deserves so much more than…” being stuck with her.

“Don’t,” James snapped out the single syllable, and the bite of command cut her off. “Don’t do that to yourself. Steve wants you. You want him. You both deserve everything. That’s it. Period full stop.”

“And that’s all you have to say on the subject?” Granted, the briskness in his voice demanded she listen, and remarkably, the order calmed her down.

“Damn straight, doll. Are you going to keep him waiting because you’re nervous? Or put the man out of his misery and let him treat you right?” The dare in his voice and the challenge in his eyes stiffened her spine.

“Just for that—you and me, tomorrow morning. Sparring. Be ready to bring it.”

“Hell. Yes.” Then he gave her another light kiss, and she was particularly happy for the smudge proof lipstick. Most of them were shit but this was a gloss. He offered her an arm. “If you’ll do me the honor…”

Finding a smile in spite of the see-sawing emotions, she slid her arm through his. “Charmer.”

“I’m starting to get the hang of it again.” He winked, and the elevator doors opened as he arrived. “Friday, you know where to take her?”

“I do, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Have a great evening, doll—and enjoy yourself.” James kissed her fingers gently, then released them and the door closed on his smile. The elevator descended, but only a few floors.

Then the doors opened and Steve stood there, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and a hunter green tie to match her dress. He had his hands in his pockets, and was looking down and glanced up as the doors parted. His hair had a tousled look, and his beard framed his smile perfectly as his eyes lit up.

“Wow,” he said with vehemence as she stepped out. Then indulging herself she did a little spin to give her a little time before she faced him again.

“You’re looking good, Rogers,” she told him.

“Right back atcha, Romanoff.” His gaze dipped to his dog tags, and he grinned as he offered his arm. “The jewelry looks better than I hoped.”

“They’re lovely,” she murmured as he dipped his head to kiss her lightly. It was just a teasing brush of his lips to hers and she sighed. As he smiled down at her, it dawned on her where she was…

“Oh,” she whispered, and glanced around her floor. The damaged walls had been filled in and repainted, the floor had fresh gray carpet, the damaged furniture had been replaced, and there was a table and chairs set up on the new tile in the kitchen including lit candles and two silver topped plates and a bottle of wine chilling. “You did all of this since I took my nap?”

Was that even possible?

Steve chuckled, guiding her toward the table. “No, Tony brought in people over the last couple of days and got your floor in shape. We moved your personal items out and they rehabbed everything, I spent my afternoon on a surprise. But first dinner.”

“A surprise…” Natasha stopped and faced at the table. “Steve—you don’t have to keep doing all this for me. The jewelry, a surprise—it’s…”

He gazed at her steadily. “It’s what gentlemen do when they care about someone, and want that someone to know how important she is to them.”

 _Don’t_. James’ snap echoed through her. Not having a mask to fall back on shouldn’t be this difficult. It was _Steve._ He knew her.

“It’s really lovely,” she told him.

“Yeah?” His smile widened.

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

“Good, this is just the beginning,” he said as he pulled out her chair. “Friday can you play the selection and lower the lights for us and then resume voice activated mode?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

As Natasha sat, a beautiful instrumental began to play, loud enough to be appreciated and low enough to not intrude on conversation. Once she was seated, Steve moved to his chair across from her, but the round table wasn’t so large that he was a million miles away. The candlelight played over his face, and Nat enjoyed the intimate atmosphere.

“I cheated on the wine,” he admitted. “Friday has a list of your favorites on file.”

“That’s not cheating,” she chuckled. “That’s smart intelligence gathering.”

He opened the bottle, then poured her glass and sparkling white. The familiar label was indeed one of her favorites, usually reserved for after a successful mission. After he poured his, he set the bottle aside then lifted his glass. “To the second best thing we’ve ever done.”

Surprised, she raised her eyebrows. “Second best?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, gazed fixed on hers. “The first best was when we met.”

Touching her glass to his, she chuckled. “Does that make Loki our matchmaker?”

His stricken expression pulled another peal of laughter out of her and he looked at his wine with near dismay before shrugging. “Well it’s him or Fury…I’m not sure which one I prefer.”

“Then let’s say Coulson,” she decided. “He actually introduced us—though I had seen you before then…a couple of times.”

“Were you assigned to the base in New York where I woke up?”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

And he set the wine glass. “Photo static veil…long red curly hair, and bad uniform. The Dodgers take lead 8-4…”

Natasha made a face, then nodded slowly. “Guilty.”

He shook his head and started laughing. “You were there when I woke up.”

“I was…Nick thought since we might have some similar experience—time wise, I’d be a good fit.”

“You didn’t even try to stop me.” He frowned. “Angel, I’ve seen you talk down the other guy, you were so awkward…”

“It was a _stupid_ plan,” she told him. “I argued with Fury about it, but he thought it best to ease you into the future. The problem with the fact I was alive in the 40s where you were from was my 40s was Russia, not the States—and I know next to nothing about baseball, so I just picked a game we had a decent recording of.”

After taking a swallow of his wine, he was still grinning. “I wish you’d looked like you…”

“Oh, no. I don’t. I had enough issues with Tony associating me with SHIELD betrayal. The last thing I needed was you linking me to those first disorienting moments before we crashed the world down on you…but I followed you when you took off. Before the rest of the team came. I kept an eye on you—and for a little while after. Then I had a job and I didn’t see you again until the hellicarrier when we were introduced.”

“Fair enough.” He took the information way better than she expected.

“You’re not upset that I didn’t tell you the truth sooner?”

“Nat—you were doing your job and you had no reason to not do it. You didn’t know me then. And knowing you as I do—you had to have messed that up on purpose, you’re too damn talented.”

The compliment warmed her.

“That was one, when was the second time?”

She made a face. “They showed us your films in the Red Room.”

His eyes widened. “The war movies?”

Sucking on her upper lip to hold off a smile. “And a couple where you punched Hitler.” A drink of the wine covered her mouth, and Steve gaped at her. “I have to say—the suit was _much_ better in person.”

Then it was Steve’s turn to laugh and he buried his face in his hand as he leaned into the table. “And you still agreed to go out with me.”

“Hmm-hmm.”

“I can’t believe they showed you those films…” Then he frowned. “Why would they?”

“Because Captain America is a man, and all men have weaknesses.” Probably not first date conversation. “They wanted us to understand who the enemy was.”

“We were allies during the war.” His frown deepened.

A little shrug. “They were always looking ahead to after the war.”

“You know, I’m not sure what disturbs me more—you seeing those movies or the fact you’ve never teased me about them.”

“That’s because I liked them,” she confessed, and enjoyed the way his eyes lit up.

“You did?”

“Hmm-hmm...your punching was absolutely terrible, but you were wonderful when you burst through doors and shot all the Germans.” Oh, she was going to embarrass herself. “I actually pretended to be you sometimes during shooting exercises.”

Instead of laughing at her, he reached across and covered her hand. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured with such a wealth of sympathy, she wanted to kick herself.

“For what?”

“I was a terrible shot.”

The comment lay between them for a beat, and then she grinned before she laughed aloud. “Okay, enough humiliating me. Now you tell an embarrassing story or three.”

“You get enough of those out of Bucky,” he admonished her, but the grin stretching his cheeks matched the smile in his eyes. “Would you like to know what’s for dinner?”

“Something wonderful I’m assuming…” Not that she could smell any rich scents, but honestly she’d been more focused on him.

“I hope so,” he said, and for the space of a moment his smile flickered and a bit of doubt crept into his eyes. Steve was nervous.

Just like she was.

And at that, she relaxed. The last thing he needed was to become too keyed up from her anxiety.

“I’m sure it’s great,” she told him. “Whatever it is.”

“Well let’s find out,” he lifted the silver top from her plate and then his.

Sushi. Two full rolls—a dragon and tiger roll for her and what looked like a California and maybe a Philadelphia roll for him. “Steve you hate sushi.”

“I don’t hate it,” he argued. “And you love it.”

“You don’t like sushi,” she pointed out. “You pretty much refused to ever even try it.”

“Fair…” He said. “And that may have been short sighted of me. Particularly because…raw fish shouldn’t be a thing.” When she snickered, he gave her a perfectly bland look. “And tonight we’re both trying new things…so I thought it appropriate.”

She melted. He was turning her into a pile of goo. “Please tell me you have backup—or at least more rolls if you like them because that can’t possibly be enough to feed you.”

“I’ll be fine,” he raised a hand palm forward as he promised.

“You ate earlier.” It wasn’t a question.

“I did—in fact eat earlier. Buck and I had a late lunch after we were done.” He gave her a lopsided grin to go with the apology. “Considering I was stealing you away, buying him lunch was the least I could do.”

“Good.” Frankly, she’d have been more worried about him than her anyway. She could eat _all_ the sushi. “So you’ve really never tried any sushi, ever?”

“No.” He studied the ones on his plate. “You said California and Philly rolls were the best ones for a newbie to try.”

“I did…they’re generally quite pleasant and no spice whatsoever.”

He picked up one and studied it. “What’s the orange stuff on the outside?”

“Eat it first, then I’ll tell you.” She unwrapped her chopsticks, then took the piece from his fingers and held it to his lips. “Trust me.”

Opening his mouth, he accepted the bite and chewed it thoughtfully as she sat back to watch him. When he finally swallowed it, he studied the food for a beat and then looked at her.

“You hate it.”

“No,” he said, too quickly. “It’s fine…it’s—different.”

“You hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” he argued, and reached out to take a section from the Philly roll and sampled it. His expression was a study in doing his damnedest to not grimace, and it was an admirable attempt. “Really,” he said after he swallowed, then took a drink of the water to wash it down. He didn’t even try for the wine.

“Dorogoi…you _hate_ it.” She smiled at him. “It’s fine if you don’t like it.”

He frowned. “But you love sushi…”

“And you’re allowed to not enjoy something that I do, really. Please don’t eat it to try and make me happy.”

“But the sushi does make you happy?” Poor thing looked so serious.

“Yes, it makes me incredibly happy. No one has ever forced themselves to eat something for me before…” She hesitated a moment. Because that didn’t quite feel right, but still… “In particular something they had been so steadfast that they didn’t like.” To prove her point, she took a bite of her dragon roll, then smiled as she chewed. It was perfect, and she almost groaned. The shrimp tempura and cucumber were the perfect level of crispness. Despite the strudel she’d eaten earlier, she really was hungry.

Some of his dissatisfaction fled at her enjoyment. “So what were the orange things?”

“Caviar,” she told him before taking another bite and it took every ounce of her discipline not to burst out laughing at the serious dismay in his expression.

But all he said was, “Good to know.” He refilled her wine glass and his, but he drained his water before he took a sip. She imagined he needed to rinse his mouth out after that little revelation.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem at all bothered that he didn’t care for the food and they talked about the sushi, what was in hers, when was the first time she tried it, what were her favorite rolls, and then what other foods did she like. He got a lot of answers out of her before she turned the tables, and interrogated him for his favorites—though she knew most of them.

They ranged out from there, and had to consult Friday on what seasons some television shows were in, because they’d lost track over the last few months. They switched to movies and she reminded him there was a new _Star Wars_ movie coming out in a few weeks, and they needed to get James caught up so they could go see it. There had been a Disney movie released just before the Lagos incident they hadn’t gotten to see yet.

By the time she had finished eating and was nearly done with her second glass of wine, her sides ached from laughing and they had a plan to get caught up on her favorite reality series, and one of the cooking competition shows he guiltily admitted to liking. All of the episodes were on one of the streaming services, so they had time. Movies would take a little longer, and Steve insisted they use his filmography list for James, because he already knew which ones he wouldn’t like.

“Science fiction anything, he’s going to love,” he insisted. “He loved those pulp novels, read them every chance he got.”

“So _Star Wars_ is going to be a win with him.”

“ _Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien_ ,” he made a face on the last one. He hadn’t been overly fond of the face huggers. “I think we skip _Predator_.”

She tilted her head from side to side. Considering she often employed the idea of testing her skills against the biggest and baddest, she enjoyed those movies, but she saw Steve’s point.

“And anything Disney. We saw _Snow White_ four times when it came out.”

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized to him.

He snorted. “It was revolutionary, and even Bucky liked it despite the fact it was a cartoon.”

“Not _Sleeping Beauty_ ,” she amended his list and he paused a beat to study her.

“Fair,” he conceded. The Tchaikovsky was bad enough, but the idea of sleeping away their life wasn’t something any of them needed to be reminded of. “Done?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, and a nod. “Full without being too full.”

“Friday, increase lights thirty percent.” The lights came up, but the muted effect kept the room tranquil. He blew out the candles as he stood, then left his napkin on the table before setting the silver top over his uneaten sushi. “We’ll save that for you for later.”

When he offered his hand, she took it, and let him help her out of the chair. He stroked the chain around her neck, down to the tags with a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “Close your eyes?”

She closed them obediently. Then he took her hand in his, and slipped the other to her lower back.

“Walk with me,” he murmured, and he guided her forward. “Keep the eyes closed.”

“They’re closed,” she assured him. She knew her floor, and the layout, so when he turned her away from the table and walked her across to the open space to the far side, her heart began to ramp up.

The door opening confirmed it, and then he stepped her inside and her heels clicked against the wood. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, and steadied her breathing.

“Okay—open your eyes.”

The last time she’d glanced inside the room had been a ruin, the wood floor torn up, the mirrors shattered, the barre hanging partially off the wall. But it was all—it was all back the way it had been. The wood floors gleamed under the low light, and the wall of mirrors were perfectly in tact. Even the damaged walls had been patched, sealed, and repainted.

It didn’t have the dance studio smell, the layers of dust and sweat from a long workout that soaked into the wood itself—but it was perfect.

She turned in a slow circle. It was like nothing had ever happened to it.

“This is what Buck and I were doing this afternoon. Tony had gotten a lot fixed, but this still needed the mirrors hung and the flooring finished. It didn’t—it didn’t take as long as I thought it would, but I wanted you to have it back.”

She truly lacked the words for this. “Steve…I don’t know what to say. Thank you seems so inadequate.”

“Does it make you happy?”

Facing him, she gave him an exasperated look. “Yes, it makes me happy.”

“Then would you do me the honor of the first dance in here?”

Shifting her grip so her left hand was in his and his hand was on her waist, she smiled. “Waltz is easy…just move with me. Just like if we were sparring…only you have to actually move with me and not wait for me to attack first.”

He laughed.

“Friday—some Frank Sinatra please— _Fly Me to the Moon_.” The melodic beat was easy to move to and did half the work for her as she stepped back and Steve followed her, gaze divided between her feet and her face.

After the first two passes, she wiggled his arm. “Tighten up the frame, just enough so you can control the motion.” It was a little like sparring with him, but like sparring when she made an adjustment he listened closely. They moved through the left foot change, right foot change, and box step. Friday play Frank on repeat, and by the third time through the song, Steve held her gaze without once looking at her feet.

And he’d only stepped on her toes a couple of times.

“Your turn,” she told him. “You lead—I’ll follow you.”

His eyes brightened.

“Friday—Louis Armstrong please— _What a Wonderful World.”_ It was slower than Sinatra, but perfect.

Then they were moving slowly around the room, Steve’s studious expression betraying his concentration, but he relaxed as the music remained the slow, smooth jazz tune as Louis serenaded them. Natasha smiled, each time he hesitated on a step, she leaned just a bit toward the correct leg and he recovered beautifully. When he improvised and extended his arm, she floated away on a little spin, then curled back into his arms. His grin delighted her.

She had Friday playing a list of similar songs, and she walked him through a promenade, and a progressive change. And they waltzed together switching leads until Steve could pick it up from her, and give it back with the same grace. While he’d been flushing when they started, his expression relaxed as his confidence grew.

When Anne Murray came on, he locked gazes on her and she couldn’t look anywhere else, and their steps were in perfect sync.

The occasional missteps vanished and not once did he catch her toes. At the end of the song as the music drifted away, he cupped her face and kissed her, and it was a dance all of its own as he teased her tongue with his and caressed her cheeks with infinite gentleness, particularly the one still bruised.

When he let her up for air, she grinned. “Not bad, Rogers…not bad at all. Want to shake it up a little bit?”

He stripped off his jacket and hung it over the barre before he loosened his tie. “Bring it Romanoff.”

His reaction to the lindy hop was priceless. His eyes widened and he started to shake his head, but she wagged a finger at him.

“Angel—this was Bucky’s dance. I can’t…”

“Can’t throw me around?” She smirked, and leapt, his hands caught her at the waist and held her up automatically. “I think you can handle it big guy.”

It took slightly longer than the waltz, but by the time Steve relaxed into it, she was having a blast. Every time she changed it up, he caught her. The first time he swung her up and over, she landed neatly and hopped back to him, he’d thrown his head back and laughed.

It wasn’t long before they had to ask Friday to increase the air conditioning as the humidity in the room rose. They paused for a water break, and to catch their breath.

“What do you want to try next?”

“Anything,” he told her and his eyes narrowed at her grin.

“Anything?”

“Well, I’m not going to tattoo your name on my ass,” he retorted, echoing her declaration from earlier in the morning and she laughed. Steve cutting loose with both his posture and his language was a delight. “But I’m up for whatever you can throw at me.”

“Someone’s getting cocky,” she murmured, then took another swallow of water. The dress was perfect for this. It floated around her when she moved and left her enough skin exposed to cool fast.

“Someone has an amazing teacher.”

“Compliments, sir—will get you everything.” She winked. Then she walked him through a foxtrot, and when he nailed that, she took him through a shimmy, and then started dancing their way up a decade from the swing dance to the jitterbug to the jive, and he was game for all of it.

When they were both soaked with sweat, and laughing too hard to stand up, she joined him in lying flat on the wood floor and staring up at the ceiling. Friday had muted the music down to something they could just listen to and Natasha kicked off her shoes.

She glanced over at Steve, and found him watching her with a smile on his face. “Having fun?” he asked.

“More than you can imagine,” she told him honestly. “This is the best date I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah?” His smile grew. “Me too.”

“Just needed the right partner,” she reminded him, the hum his note left behind hadn’t quieted, not once.

“I did.” Then he rolled onto his side, and propped his head onto his hand. “You’re amazing.”

Her face was already warm from the dancing, but she couldn’t attribute the sudden flush to just that. She knew how to control her blushing, it was just a physiological reaction to nerves—but Steve Rogers made her nervous. Especially when he gazed at her like that.

“I think you’re the amazing one…you keep doing all these wonderful things for me.”

“You’ve been doing wonderful things for me for years. It’s about time I paid attention,” he reminded her.

“That’s what partners do, Steve,” she murmured. “They look after each other.”

She pressed a kiss to two of her fingers, then pressed those fingers to his lips. He caught her hand there, and tickled her fingers with another kiss before he let them go.

“What next?” She asked him.

“Well, I’ll walk you home, and kiss you at your door and tell you good night.” He was perfectly sober. “But I’ll be sure to ask if I can see you again, because third dates are the charm.”

“Are they?” She stretched, then rolled onto her side to mirror him.

“They’re magic…my ma always said the first date knocked on the door, the second date was when she opened the door and let you get a good look, and on the third date, she’d ask you inside if she was the right one.”

“That seems very progressive of your mother,” Natasha teased him.

“She didn’t mean sex, Nat,” he chided her. “She meant—emotionally, people put on masks when they're in public. They want you to only see their good parts. But those masks come off slowly, and when you can see their real face—that’s when the magic happens.”

She swallowed, she always wore masks. Covers. Except tonight…

“I know what I’m saying,” he told her, then traced a finger down her cheek. “You’ve got nothing to worry about—the woman under all those covers is worth a million times any of them. I don’t need a third date to know that.”

“Then why have one?” If he already liked her—which he had told her over and over he did—why did they need the dating? “Not that I’m opposed,” she added. “Dating’s really nice.” There’d been the kissing date, and now the dancing date. Steve Rogers was full of surprises.

“Because you deserve to be courted,” he answered and it was such an old fashioned concept, and utterly foreign to her own experiences. “It might not be as with the times as people swiping left or right to decide whether they’re compatible, but I like taking things a little slower. We have had to rush so much—I want to savor this. I want to savor you.”

“Even if…”

“Even if you and Buck have found a way to reconnect,” he told her, not shying at all away from it. “Your relationship with him is different from your relationship with me. You have a foundation with him—and I want to build one with you. Is sex something you need to know that I mean what I’m saying?”

“No,” she told him, then she scooted up to sit, cross-legged and he sat up to meet her. “Sex—sex was a tool. It was something they trained me not to care about, it was—it wasn’t about my pleasure. It was always about the mission.”

He frowned. “But you and Buck…?” Worry coated those words.

“That’s definitely about pleasure,” she assured him, then caught his hand. “And I’m already dead certain it is with you. Steve—no one has ever taken this kind of time with me. It’s a little disconcerting.”

“Because I want you…” He told her, then pressed his hand over her heart. “I want the woman in here and the woman in here,” he continued, lifting his hand to touch her head. “She captivates me with her strength, her poise, and her grace. Your body is beautiful Nat, and I want to draw you and touch you, and I want to hear you moan and cry out, I want to do all of those things. But I’m not going to rush a single step of this. When we get there—and we will—you’re going to know beyond a shadow of a doubt how much I treasure you. You’re going to know me inside and out, and we’re going to learn each other like you taught me those dances…”

“I’ll follow your lead,” she told him, unable to really wrap her mind around what he wanted to do. “But I do have one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You can’t just kiss me at the door and walk away. I like sleeping with you.”

He chuckled. “I like sleeping next to you, too. We can still do that…”

“And I can still pose nude for you?”

“Not going to tell you no, Angel.” He gathered her hands in his and lifted them both to kiss. “And I’m not going to begrudge you and Buck either—just—maybe not when I’m right there in the bed with you.”

“Ever?” She couldn’t keep the hopeful note out because really—the idea of being with both of them at the same time, she couldn’t say she hadn’t entertained the concept.

“No,” he said, though red crept over his ears. “Not ever. But not yet, either.”

“I can live with that.” Honestly, she could have lived with whatever rules he wanted to put on their being together. No one should be uncomfortable, and they were already giving her a lot, she could bend.

“Do you want to know what I think we should do now?” He asked as he stood, and offered her a hand.

She took it and let him pull her to her feet with minimal effort. “I can think of a lot of things, but what did you have in mind Captain?”

“Pajamas, bed, popcorn, and introducing Buck to Darth Vader.”

“Very well, Captain Rogers,” she told him primly as she paced over to collect her shoes. “But we need to clean up our dinner, then you have to walk me to my door and give me a proper good night kiss, first.”

He smiled at her, and if she could have captured that moment of Steve standing in the middle of her dance studio, tie loose, and shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal his golden arms, hair tousled and damp from dancing, she’d frame it and put it on her wall.

“And Steve?” She glanced over her shoulder at him as she picked up his jacket. “Tonight was perfect. Thank you for my first real date, ever.”

If she’d thought his smile before was beautiful—it had nothing on the one he gave her then.

No masks.

No roles.

Just Steve and Natasha.

Perfect.


	21. Render

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Nat spar, and Tony needs to talk to Nat.

**Chapter Twenty-One**

**Render**

**Natasha**

 

 

Natasha descended into a slow split, controlling the descent to flex the muscles in her inner thighs, elongating the lateral band along her thigh and pointing her toes to increase the stress on her calves and lower back as she bent her body over her right leg. Across the gym, Steve and James were winding each other up while warming up on the speed bags. Straightening her back, she planted her hands on the floor, and then began to slow, punishing process of rolling all of her weight, upward, and over her shoulders until she had completely inverted and balanced on her hands only, legs stretched and even.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Steve commented from the other side of the gym.

She allowed herself a smile, but didn’t let him distract her. “You’re supposed to be focusing on your hits, Rogers, why are you looking at my ass?”

“I’m multitasking.” The smirk audible in his voice entertained her. Sweat trickled down her arm as she began turning her hands and walking herself in a slow pivot so she could see them.

“Hmm…” She exhaled the low sound. “I see your point.” Even upside down, the pair of them moving in tandem as they hammered the bags was definitely worth watching.

“Finish stretching, Natalia,” James said with a laugh. “You promised me a spar.”

“I did.” Serene despite the exertion, she tilted her right foot toward the ground, and then rolling her whole body into a cartwheel, and then back to her hands. She repeated the motion using her left foot. The spin coupled with her head upside down sending all the blood pounding into her skull threatened to disorient her.

Which was why she did it.

Finally, she completed the set of wheels until she was on her feet and in an arabesque, perfectly balanced and her legs warmed up. “Okay Friday, cue the music.” The pointe shoes were warmed and stretched along with her legs, and she closed out the sound of fists hitting bags, the faint huffs of their breathing, and the occasional comments they tossed at each other.

There was something enormously comforting about the litany of teasing remarks they exchanged. When _Bohemian Rhapsody_ began to play, she went through a whole series of positions, riding the grace of the music. The six minute suite was perfect for warming up, building control, and then letting loose.

Every step elongated her stretches. Every motion established her control. The constant hum of her mind cycling from threat assessment to intelligence analysis silenced as she flowed with the music.

Her bruises weren’t stiff. Her mind relaxed. Her body sharpened to a point, riding the razor edge between performance and exertion. When the song segued into the operatic passage, she went up en pointe. Pirouette, arabesque, step in and out, back to center, and around. She spun with her dance, and when it reached the hard rock, she rolled with it.

When the last beat of the music drifted off, she dropped and blew out a breath. Reality and the training room rushed back to her as two pairs of hands applauded. Lifting her gaze, she grinned at her audience.

“You’re supposed to be warming up,” she reminded them, but the sternness just didn’t make it into her voice.

“I’m exceptionally warm,” James assured her with a slow grin and Steve just shook his head.

“No way I was going to punch a bag while you were doing that.” There was a hint of wonder in his voice. “Damn Nat. I knew you danced, but you rarely let anyone see it.”

True. She shrugged. “You’re not just anyone.” Sweat soaked her top, but she’d dressed in a tank and tap pants for a reason. “Besides—I need everything loose, I promised to spar with James.”

“That you did.”

Switching to sitting, she stripped off her pointe shoes and flexed her toes. They weren’t quite sore yet. She could go for an hour or two before the punishment would brutalize her toes. On the other hand, she’d meant it when she said she was warming up.

Sparring with James wouldn’t be a cakewalk. She’d fought him two times in recent memory, and she hadn’t held back either time and he’d still beaten her soundly . A thrill raced up her spine as he and Steve resumed their speed bag punching. The closest she’d come had ended rather abruptly when he’d thrown her into a car.

When sparring, they were going for strikes, limiting the opponent's connects, and attempting to _disable_ without actually harming. Disabling James’ metal arm without actually hurting him would be hard as hell.

But she had a few ideas. Muscles warmed, she left her feet bare and hung up her pointe shoes before going to wrap her hands. Technically in a slap spar, she didn’t need them wrapped—again, metal arm. Even the most casual of strikes could injure her against that. Better to take precautions.

The shivery awareness of being watched crept over her, and she checked one of the wall mirrors. Neither Steve nor James were looking in her direction. Canting her head toward one of the cameras, she raised her eyebrows.

The red light flickered, pulsing intermittently in a pattern. Morse code.

_Come up when you’re done._

Tony wanted to talk to her in private. She nodded. Another quick set of pulses.

_See you soon._

Then the light stabilized. Movement just behind her as James deliberately dragged a step to let her know he was there. “Everything okay?” His voice was low, deliberately whispering probably to keep it from carrying to Steve who was still punching his bag.

“I’m fine. You ready?” She turned and met his questioning gaze. He flicked a look to the camera then back to her. So, yes, he noticed the deliberate flickering. Likely translated it as well, so she just gave him a patient look. Her answer remained unchanged.

She’d had fabulous evening with Steve, then they’d all piled into her room with popcorn and introduced James to _Star Wars_ following by the _Empire Strikes Back_. He might have continued on to watch  _Return of the Jedi,_ but she’d gone to sleep, snug and secure right between them.

Though he’d been awake when she had woken, he didn’t look fatigued and there were no shadows under his eyes. Hopefully it hadn’t been nightmares, but if he had one, he didn’t mention it.

His expression relaxed minutely and he checked his own wraps. “Rules?”

More curious than anything, because she only had pieces… “What were the rules before?”

“Don’t die,” he said dryly. “I think we can do a step better than that.”

With a light laugh, she shook her head. “I doubt it was that basic. Even the Red Room shifted the rules periodically.” Don’t die was a given. Don’t maim would be specified outside of certain bouts. Most of the time, it didn’t seem that their instructors cared. Death didn’t pull its punches.

“Avoid breaking bones,” he said, some of the good humor draining from his expression as he sobered. “Avoid organ injuries.”

Both of those were fair.

“Open handed or closed fist?” She couldn’t help studying his arm up close. The Wakandan technology was smoothing, less prone to the disjointed gaps when the rills adjusted. Where she might have been able to jam a knife between the rills to try and disable the joints on the old one, she wasn’t going to have much luck with that with this one.

Had it been shielded for EMP or electrical overload? Would even a stinger work on that?

“Open hand,” he said with a steady look. “Avoid face shots.”

“I can take it.” She scowled at him.

“I don’t care,” he retaliated. “No face shots. No broken bones. No repeated organ strikes after the first slap.”

“Goal?”

“You and Steve go to ten slaps?”

She nodded. It was the highest he would go to, even when she pushed him.

“Can you handle twenty?” That was a challenge if she’d ever heard one.

“Can you?”

His slow smile was all the answer she needed.

“Twenty it is then,” she gave him a hip bump and then sauntered toward the mats. Steve had paused to drink some water and he tracked their movements. “Keep count for us, Steve?”

“Sure,” he answered, wrapping a towel around his neck as he followed them. He would worry regardless.

Once on the mat, she kept her back to James and only turned her head slightly so she could track him in her periphery. Steve always waited for her to make the first move. Clint tended to fight dirty, and if she gave him even an ounce of distraction to work with, he’d lunge into it. She’d trapped him more than once that way.

So what would James be?

In all the memories she’d recovered, she hadn’t yet found one of them _sparring_. Fighting others, yes. Struggling against others. But not she and he actively training together. If he had, then he had yet another advantage. So many unknowns. So much brutal training they had in common, and he definitely outweighed her and was stronger. He was also fast as hell.

Anticipation curled through her.

This was going to be fun.

“Ready?” Steve asked, glancing from her to James, then back. She still didn’t turn to face James, but she nodded, and he must have as well because Steve said, “Please don’t kill each other. Go.”

There was movement behind her and she hit the mat and rolled toward his legs and James launched over her. Range was her greatest asset here, followed closely by speed. She tumbled and twisted right back to her feet and raced toward him as he closed, and instead of leaping—which he anticipated because his right arm went up, she slid right between his legs, and slapped his ass as she glided to the other side and then back up to her feet.

“That’s one,” Steve laughed aloud.

She didn’t dare get cocky or slow down, because James was right there, and she barely got an arm up to block the openhanded palm strike. Absorbing the blow with her shoulder, she slapped her hand to his stomach and ducked under his arm, and landed the flat of her foot against his ass to launch off him and dive away before his reverse swing caught her. On her feet, she was already running at him as he turned, and braced his legs but she leapt, shorting the jump so her thighs locked on his hips rather than his shoulders, and she pitched the center of her gravity back as she arched her back and then he was stumbling and she yanked him over her and threw him.

Something in her quad burned at the strain of the movement. With a leap, she was back on her feet. And James stopped playing defense. He came at her, full speed and it was a dance to avoid the strikes. She had time to register his grin as she ducked the beneath his arm, and then gripping his wrist, twisted herself upwards, this time her calves locked around his neck, and they were falling.

They both hit the mats hard and it pushed the air out of her lungs and it was her turn to get spanked with a double tap to her ass. Well—she’d kind of asked for that after her cheeky maneuver earlier.

It was exhilarating, the dance, and the speed as they launched to their feet. Fighting like this was twice as hard as actually letting every move complete because she had to watch her force, and he had to watch his, but something in her loosened with each maneuver. A pattern of choices, a series of if A, then B, and she stopped trying to anticipate his moves and simply responded to them.

At some point Steve called out another point, but she lost track, whipping around James at speed, and throwing them both off balance. The only way to tumble him was to take herself down, too. And she landed open-handed slaps with every fall and took her fair share of them.

She ducked a swipe with his left arm, and laughed as his hand riffled her hair, but he didn’t grab her by the head and that had her aiming with even more care when she landed the slaps to either of his thighs as she slid between his legs. The colorful curse slipping his lips made her grin even harder. She’d been mindful of his junk. Instead of letting her go all the way, he grabbed her arm and yanked her back up.

Flowing with the motion, she gripped one of the wraps on her hand and unwound it enough to create a makeshift garrote and then she got it round his left wrist and twisted, spinning to pull free. She took the slap to her hip as she worked his left arm behind him. Between the metal and his strength, it took all of her weight and considerable momentum to pin his left arm to his back.

And fuck, she couldn’t keep it there, so she slid a hand up to tap his shoulder, and got the slap in just before he shoved backwards and sent her skidding, and she couldn’t catch her balance before he landed and they went down, his hand flat against her chest and all the air whuffed out of her. If not for the fact, he fisted her shirt at the last second she would have smacked her head against the floor instead of dangling a quarter inch above it.

“Point to each, 20-19,” Steve said and then added a slow whistle. “Holy hell, you two.”

James grinned down at her and then set her against the mat carefully before dropping to sit next to her. She lay there panting, trying to catch her breath and every single one of her muscles burned.

That had been glorious.

Steve walked over to deliver water bottles and he stared at her, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Need a medic?”

She flipped him off, before taking the bottle and sitting up. Hell, even her abs ached. “I’ll be fine. Gimme a minute and I can go for round two.”

James snorted. “Count me out. You fight dirty.” He plucked at her loose hand wrap.

“It’s not a weapon,” she told him with a smirk. “And it’s not like it worked all that well.”

“If you’d had a knife, you could have gotten it right into the base of my skull with that move.”

“I could have severed your femoral artery three times, too…and you could have snapped my neck just by grabbing a handful of hair.”

“Incapacitated me with the groin strikes, you’ve done it before.” He mock glared at her, as if chiding her for both having done it before and not choosing to do it now.

“It didn’t remotely take you down before,” she retorted, rolling her head from side to side.

“You never went for the head.” Where he’d been commenting before, he turned critical. “You had two openings you could have used and you didn’t take advantage of either.”

“Because you left it open.” She drained half the bottle in one go. It was cool against her throat. “Which meant you wanted me there, and you clearly know how to break the thigh hold with a shoulder.”

“So you went for the full body twist instead,” he said with a frown. “Is your leg okay?”

“I’ll live,” she chuckled.

“You two are nuts,” Steve said conversationally as he dropped onto the mat next to them and she grinned. “You realize you’re both complaining the other of you didn’t hit hard enough or take enough advantage?”

She glanced at James, and as one they stared at Steve, unblinking and said in equally dry tones, “Yes.”

“Natalia was holding back,” James stated.

“Pfft,” she blew a raspberry at him. “No, I wasn’t. The goal was to score hits, not to score damage.”

“But you had to over compensate too much.”

“And you didn’t?” She dared him to dispute her. “You forget milli moi, we’ve fought when we were _trying_ take the other out for real. I didn’t win—either time.”

“You came closer in DC than in Germany,” he said with a shrug, but the lines at the corners of his eyes tightened. “And your hits in Germany hurt a lot more than you think.”

“But they didn’t stop you.”

“Were you trying to kill me?” Point blank challenge.

“No,” she admitted. “Just to stop you.” In DC, yes she had, but not in Germany.

“And that was your mistake. You know the mission is everything and once I was triggered, nothing short of crippling me or knocking me out…”

“In fairness, I did try to knock you out. It’s not my fault, you have a hard head.”

He glared. “Then why didn’t you get a gun? Or something with more force to hit me with than your boney elbows.”

Eyebrows raised, she opened her mouth but Steve’s piercing whistle cut her off and they looked from each other to him again. “And if you two kids can’t play nice, I’ll have to separate you.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, but James had him pinned and she got the shoe off, and then she danced her nails down Steve’s instep and he howled with laughter.

Steve Rogers had exactly one ticklish spot that she’d ever found. He probably had others—but the bottoms of his feet were his Achilles heel. When Steve managed to dislodge James, she tumbled away before he could retaliate, but he caught her leg and hauled her back. Rolling, she tried to get her knee away, but he got his thumb and forefinger just on either side of her knee cap and hit the nerves there. Laughter trilled through her at the pressure. It took more than just some nails to get her.

James chortled at both of then, and when Steve raised an eyebrow, she nodded even as she laughed. Hopefully Steve knew where he was ticklish, she hadn’t found it yet—though now that she’d thought about it. She needed to find where. Eeling away from Steve, she launched onto James, he caught her waist even as her knees settled on either side of him.

“ _Nyet kotyonok_ ,” he said chuckling. “I am impervious.” Past James’ shoulder, she caught Steve’s flipping motion so she rolled James over and let him pin her, and grinned into his smirk—just as Steve got him on either side of his ribs. James jerked and spilled out a sharp laugh. He flexed his right hand on her, but he slammed his left onto the mat next to her as he convulsed and between she and Steve they kept him in place as he squirmed.

Finally she let go, still laughing kind of helplessly and Steve tumbled to the side, wiping his eyes as James glared at both of them before cracking up. Then he leaned down and kissed her nose. “Mean, _kotyonok_ —teaming up with him.”

“Tactical,” she snarked, then gave him a light kiss before shoving his shoulders. “Off…you’re hot.”

“Well, thanks doll. I think you’re gorgeous, too,” he drawled, and she rolled her eyes, but he slid over and up to his feet, then he and Steve were both offering her hand and she let them pull her up.

Panting, she pushed the mess of damp, sweat soaked hair away from her face. “We need to do that more often.”

“Tickle wars?” Steve intoned innocently.

“Sure, but I meant three way sparring. That will definitely improve reaction time.” She wandered over to grab her water bottle and drain it. “And you and me, James—we’re doing that again. I want my shot.”

“I want to sharpen up your defenses, I have no problem with that.” The droll response earned him her middle finger, and he grinned.

“Shower, then food?” Steve asked as he stood.

“Not going to run?” That surprised her.

“I’m good,” he said. “Someone gave me a workout last night.”

She chuckled. “Well, I think you did pretty good for a first timer. I’ll have you in shape in no time.”

Steve clapped James on the shoulder as he passed him, and he winked at her. She laughed, shaking her head as James stared after him open mouthed. He glanced at her and raised his eyebrows, “Are congratulations in order?”

“James…a lady never kisses and tells,” she admonished him.

“Ha,” he barked out a laugh, and slung his sweaty right arm over her shoulders. “Last time I checked doll…”

“…if you finish that sentence,” Steve said from the doorway. “It’s not her who is going to be kicking your ass.” The threat lacked any kind of heat to make it real, but James lifted his hands in surrender.

“Not a word, pal. Not a word.” But when Steve turned his back James gave her another look of entreaty and she shook her head. He didn’t get to tease Steve, and James nodded once, then gave her another kiss and a sweaty hug before she pushed him off.

“We all need showers.”

“And food,” Steve added as they arrived at the elevator.

“I need to head up and talk to Tony, so I’ll catch some breakfast when I come back down, okay?”

“First one out, start the coffee,” James said as he headed for his room. One benefit to three bedrooms were three showers.

Steve caught her arm before she could follow suit and head for her room. “Everything okay?” Just a question, checking in.

Raising on her tip toes, she placed a chaste kiss on his lips. “Well he already scolded me for disappearing, so yes, I think so.”

“Okay,” Steve murmured, then caressed her cheek. “I had fun last night.”

“Me, too. You’re a pretty good dancer.”

“That’s all my teacher, Angel.”

“Not all—you got moves Rogers,” she told him playfully as she backed up. “Just wait until I get you to the disco era—I can’t wait to see you strut.”

The mock horror on his face made her laugh. “I don’t know if that would be a good look for me.”

“You don’t have a bad look,” she tossed over her shoulder.

“Nat?”

She paused at her door and glanced at him. “Yeah?”

“You said you were heading back out tonight?”

“I said we were, yeah.”

“Which we?”

The corner of her mouth quirked. “Thought we’d talk about that at lunch. I’ve got leads on both jobs, and I need to know which one works better for your schedule.” She didn’t say James’ though if there was more movement on his pardon, he needed to be here.

“I like being a part of the planning.”

“Partners.” Maybe they shouldn’t have to keep reaffirming it, but it worked for her and his expression relaxed at the reminder.

“Partners,” he confirmed as his gaze went to her throat, and she touched two fingers to the bruises.

“They’re better,” she assured him. “And your tags are right there next to the bed. I’ll put them back on after I shower.” She hadn’t wanted them flying around while she was sparring. His smile grew.

He blew her a kiss with his fingertips and she grinned, catching it out of the air and holding it to her chest because it was hers to keep. Once inside her room, she closed the door and leaned against it. Fuck she ached. Her right quad continued to burn, and she rubbed a hand against it. She’d probably pulled every muscle in it with that move, but it had been worth it.

Fifteen minutes later, showered, hair braided, and dressed in fresh clothes, she wandered out with her phone in hand to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of a movie. James was already on the sofa, feet up, and… _Return of the Jedi_ on the screen.

“Doll?”

“Hmm…”

“What would I have to do to get you to do that?”

She faced the screen and stared at Leia in her metal bikini where she sat posed in front of Jabba. Then she glanced at James, and smiled. “Get tied with a chain to some fat slug who wants to cop a feel? Eh—I’ve done worse.”

He spit out his coffee and she strolled to the elevator. “Mean, Natalia…mean…”

“Talk to me about what she does after, and then you tell me if you can’t see me doing that.” She winked at him as the elevator doors closed. “Penthouse please, Friday—or wherever Tony is.”

“He’s in his private lab, Ms. Romanoff, and he’ll be right out to join you.” Friday informed her as she opened the doors. Like in their suite, the scent of fresh coffee greeted her, so she headed for it and poured herself a mug. She’d just settled at the kitchen bar when Tony emerged.

He gave her the once over, and frowned at her neck. The bruises were still there, but they were gray-green and yellow. They’d be gone in another twenty-four hours or so. “Morning, Red.”

“Tony,” she greeted him with a lift of her mug. “What’s wrong?”

“Why does something have to be wrong?” He poured himself a mug about twice the size of hers and emptied most of the remaining coffee from the carafe. She eyed his disheveled hair, stained wife beater, grease spots on his arms, and torn jeans.

“No reason,” she said idly. “But you were up all night, and you have frustrated with your latest build written all over you.”

He grimaced. “You see too much woman.”

With a shrug, she took a sip of the coffee. “We’re all good at something.”

“True enough,” he agreed, still not answering her question directly, then beckoned her with a crooked finger. “Please join me in my office.”

He led her up the stairs and into his bedroom, then directly into his closet. More curious than anything, she didn’t comment even when he opened a hidden door and motioned for her to proceed down the steps into—a lab. It was nearly as large as one of the labs he had on the lower floors, but nestled away and hidden in the back of his private closet in his private bedroom.

Nice.

There were holo screens up with various schematics across them, and she scanned them more out of habit than actually trying to gather data. Armor sat on one table, stacked as if set aside while Peter’s repossessed suit stood in the corner, plugged in to via a couple of cords to a desktop set up.

On the central table, however, were a stack of files, three sample containers inside an isolation field, and more files open on a holo screen. She narrowed her gaze on the vials. They had a black, inky substance in them…and they were moving.

“Tony?”

“Yeah, it’s what you think it is, Red.” Tony motioned to one of the rolling stools. “I made a drive by of a small laboratory in Maine yesterday after the UN meeting. They had a sample in their backlog for identification.”

“You lifted it?”

“Pretty much,” he tapped something on the smart table, and another screen opened. “The sample came from a John Remington, PhD. A marine researcher employed by…”

“Roxxon,” she supplied before he could finish. He pointed at her with a thumb and forefinger shaped like a gun. “And he sent confidential samples to some small lab in a state nowhere near a Roxxon facility, why?”

“I’d ask him,” Tony told her leaning against the table and facing her. “But he’s a little too dead to answer questions at the moment. Car accident, less than twenty-four hours after he sent this in.”

“How’d you find out about it?”

Dead scientist. Illicit samples of highly questionable material.

“Play it Friday.” He didn’t look away from her as a recording came over the speakers.

“Mr. Stark, my name is John Remington, and I’m not sure how many people this message will need to go through to get to you, so I hope you receive this in time. The company I work for has been doing some questionable research into clean, self-renewing energy, but what they found isn’t safe and they can’t contain it or even harness it. Not properly—Mr. Stark, I’ve sent samples offsite to get a deeper chemical breakdown—the bosses are lying about what’s happened to the research platforms and vessels. This material is highly volatile and dangerous—extracting it could cause even greater problems. You have to believe me, I didn’t know they were actually—” The sound of glass shattering and the meaty explosion of bone and flesh ended the message, followed by the distinctive thump of a body hitting the ground. Then the call ended.

“That was a long range rifle shot,” Nat said slowly.

“You think?” Of course Tony recognized it. The lack of actual report, coupled with the other sounds screamed long-distance shot. “John Remington was a chief researcher for Roxxon’s renewable energies division. They launched it three years ago. He’s been the guy in charge from the beginning.”

“So he knew where they got this stuff.”

A single nod.

“I’m not going to ask if you hacked into his private systems.” It would have been her first move, and Tony tended to worry less about asking for forgiveness when he had no interest seeking permission.

“Clean as a whistle. NSA clean.” Which meant they’d either destroyed the drives utterly or rewritten them so many times there weren’t even fragments left for data.

“And they covered up the assassination…bullet wounds don’t look like car accidents.”

He picked up a folder and slid it over to her. She flipped it open. The autopsy report. The body had been severely disfigured thanks to burning, and a crushed skull. The bullet probably exited so they didn’t have to worry about that. They identified the man by his dental records, though they were only able to get a partial match because a portion of his jaw had been damaged too severely by the impact after his car skidded off a bridge and tumbled into a ravine where it then exploded.

“Which office was he based out of?”

“New Orleans and Los Angeles. Divided his time equally between them when he wasn’t out on the research vessel Prometheus.”

A ship appeared on the screen. It was a SWATH type vessel similar to a catamaran but with a lower waterline. It would make it far more stable at high speeds and in high water.

“Are those missile launchers?” She set the file aside and studied the image closer.

“Yep. Not listed as an armed vessel, but she’s boasting some serious firepower.” Still, Tony maintained his less than hyper verbal state, only answering her questions. Roxxon was up to their necks in whatever this was. She glanced at the inky samples. They didn’t seem quite stable, and she wasn’t sure if her eyes were playing tricks on her or if the liquid in those vials was actually moving.

“What do you need from them?” She focused on Tony again. The science was his thing, she’d leave him to it. But if he was reading her in, he either already suspected she was going to do some digging on her own or he needed her help. Either way, she’d get it done.

Tony placed a thumb drive on the table. “Access to their server library. They took it off the hardline, so the only place to get in is on site.”

“New Orleans or Los Angeles?”

He grimaced. “Not sure. We’ve narrowed it down to those two facilities, but even Friday can’t track what doesn’t leave a footprint.”

“Everything leaves a footprint. Where was Remington working the last few months?”

“New Orleans.”

That made sense then. “Killed there, too?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said, reaching for the thumb drive, but Tony covered her hand.

“Red…that stuff,” he said nodding to the inky looking liquid. “Is dangerous as hell because I don’t know how to stop it yet. Once it infects a host, it takes them over—completely. Friday…”

An image came up and it was of the base in Alaska. The recording had to come from Tony’s helmet, but those… “Those were people.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the stuff that got on Steve.” She went cold right down to her marrow. They’d all very carefully _not_ mentioned this part to her. When her gaze cut to Tony’s, he didn’t flinch away.

“And the serum seems to if not make him immune, made his system to inhospitable for that stuff. I tested it against a blood sample, and it reacted similarly—but…” Tony squeezed her fingers, then typed in a code on the table. The images swiveled to an isolated testing cube. There was a blood sample in there, and two vials of the black ink. They were combined and the spectroscope narrowed—cellular activity increased a thousand fold.

“It’s fighting it off like an infection.” She knew enough to be dangerous.

“Yep. Keep watching.”

The cells interacting with the ink kept replicating, and choking it out—but then the blood just—fell apart. “What the hell?”

“The white cell count increased to the point it drowned out the red—essentially killing the host and the infection.”

Nat leaned back and pulled her hand from his. “So that stuff _could_ kill him.”

“Working theory. Not going to risk testing it further. Serum kept him safe from a small amount of exposure. Larger amount—the cure would kill him before the infection did. So you go in and get that information, but you stay the hell away from their labs.” His gaze pinned her. “And I mean it, Red. We have samples, I don’t want you exposed to this stuff. You have a healing factor nearly on par with his—this stuff will kill you.”

“I got it, Tony,” she assured him. “I can take care of it. Does Steve know?”

“That he got lucky?” Tony nodded. “Yeah he does. No, I didn’t tell him how wrong it could have gone. I just got these results a couple of hours ago.” Which was why he’d been up all night.

“And Helen?”

“Not in the loop. Not yet. She got too frisky with Steve’s blood work.” At her narrowed eyed look, he raised a hand. “I took care of it, Red. No need to go all Russian assassin on her ass.”

“It wouldn’t be her ass I targeted,” she told him primly, then slipped the thumb drive into her pocket. “This have the standard encryptions?”

“It’ll break their firewalls, don’t worry about that, and it’s got a worm. Once it’s inside, Friday will unspool their whole system. So get it plugged in and installed, then destroy it if you need to in order to get out.”

“Will do…”

His mouth flattened into a thin line, and he shook his head. “When are you leaving?”

Pushing the chair forward, she covered his hand and focused on his eyes until he looked at her. Sweat gleamed at the edge of his hairline, and the air was a little musky around him—oil, sweat, and stale coffee. “Tony, focus.”

“I am focused Red. This stuff is dangerous and Cap is the guy on the ground right now. Everyone else can get up and away from it, but he can’t…” He motioned to the armor stack. “Trying to repurpose a suit for him, but…it’s not quite working the way I want it to.”

“And you went and got the samples, and you followed up on Remington’s message, and pulled all this research, and now you’re sending me to take care of getting you more.” She stroked a finger over the pulse point in his wrist. Fuck, his pulse was racing, and she’d bet money if she took his blood pressure it would be higher than reasonably safe. Tony had a heart condition for years, and even after that surgery to remove the bullet and repair the damage, he still needed to be cautious.

“You’re doing everything reasonable, and some beyond reason, to resolve this. Why haven’t you looped in the rest of the team yet?”

He cut his gaze away and frowned.

“Because you’re not sure they’re ready for something like this or because you’re not ready to share yet?”

He shook his head. “Cap doesn’t do the science, and Wilson’s not much better—he seems great for shooting things and talking, but not the work you know.” Tony pushed his drained coffee cup aside. “Rhodey’s more tactical, and Vision…well, Vision doesn’t do the intuitive leaps yet. If I just want a raw data breakdown, he can take care of it, but he gets…”

“Caught up in the minutia, I remember.” His pulse steadied as he spoke.

“This is the kind of thing I’d do with Bruce, but…no Banner. So it’s just me and figuring out the right degree set to get us the answers we need.” He looked at her. “Which means I’m asking you to take some serious risks to go in and get what I need because you’re better at the stealth, and you know computers, and you can figure out enough of the science to be dangerous.”

“Well, at least I’m useful.” She smirked.

“Red, you don’t need to be useful. You need to be alive. So—just promise to avoid their labs, get in, get that worm installed, then get out.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “Activate your bracelet while you’re in there, too. I want to know where you are at all times just in case.”

“Okay.” She didn’t argue with him. Not while he was like this. He was shouldering way too much.

He blinked at her.

“On one condition.”

His eyebrows raised.

Standing, she took his hands and dragged him upward. “You, upstairs, shower, and then sleep. At least four hours.”

“Red I don’t have time to sleep, I still need to figure out a reagent to shut that stuff down.” He turned to go back to the table, and she caught his arm, twisted, and turned him right toward the stairs.

“Yes, I’m sure you do and you will. But not sleep-deprived and stressing out.” He was halfway up the stairs before he started trying to turn back. When she blocked him, he frowned down at her. “I mean it Tony. I can be on my way in a few hours, but it will still take me time to get to New Orleans, and get a good look at the facility so I can get inside. The Avengers haven’t been called in a little over a day, but we don’t know how long that will last, you need to sleep while you can.”

“How are you getting to New Orleans?”

“Let me worry about it…”

“No. Take my jet.”

She shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

“I don’t care, I hired Nadja Rasmussen, she’s now my administrative assistant, and has all the requisite security clearances to access my jet, and Stark residences in other cities. Take my jet.” The imperious demand couldn’t be overlooked.

“Or what?” Because as much as the man meant well, he didn’t get to just order her around like she was an actual employee. He damn well new better.

“Tash—please. I know you don’t want to be trapped in the Tower. This is just another way you can be free…”

“…and you can keep an eye on me.” She gave him a little shove, and he continued up the stairs and into his closet, behind her she shut the door to his lab and glanced at the hidden camera above his suits. “Lock this down Friday, he doesn’t get back inside unless it’s life threatening emergency until he’s had at least four hours of sleep.”

“Understood, Ms. Romanoff.” And the smug note in the AI’s voice said volumes for her agreement.

“Hey,” Tony complained. “Who said you got to do that?”

Folding her arms, she just stared at him. The only person capable of giving her that much authority was the one complaining about it. Even if she could hack in and rewrite the protocols given enough time.

“You like being the boss of me,” he said with a smirk.

“About as much as you like trying to tell me what to do.” That killed the smartass look on his face and he scowled. “Now, shower. Brush your teeth. Sleep. Then eat real food…and hydrate. That much coffee can’t be good for you.”

“And you’ll take the plane, use the apartments I set up, and keep your bracelet active when you head in to Roxxon?” Yeah, he wasn’t letting that go.

She tucked her tongue against the inside of her cheek. The way his gaze bore into hers, she didn’t doubt if she said no, he was going to make it even more difficult for himself and he didn’t need or deserve that.

“Yes to the plane, provided it doesn’t compromise anyone. I’ll consider the apartments but I don’t think they’ll be necessary. I can’t be Rasmussen while I’m there if she’s got a job and has to pay taxes—thanks for that,” she added the last bit with a hint of very real sarcasm. “And if I don’t think it will trigger anything, I’ll activate the bracelet. Take it or leave it.”

Because she was going regardless.

“I’ll take it…but I’m only taking a two hour nap,” he muttered as he pivoted and led the way out of his closet.

“Fine,” she told him with a smile, angling for the door as he headed toward his bathroom.

Tony slid to a halt, and stared at her. “That was too easy.”

“What was?” All innocence, she look at him over her shoulder.

“Me deciding on only a two hour nap.”

Natasha shrugged. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do. I’ll let Friday know when I’m heading out.”

She made it two steps when she heard him curse.

“Well shit…” Then. “Well played Romanoff…I can’t get back in the lab until I’ve slept for four hours.”

Nat smiled and continued down the steps to the first floor. “Sleep well, Tony.”

“Damn spy whammy…” were the last three words she heard before the water came on in his shower.

As the elevator doors slid open at her approach, she said, “Take care of him Friday.”

“I will endeavor to do my best.” That was pretty much all they could do. So, she’d tackle Beaumont’s job next. It was in the same region, and with James along for the ride—she’d probably take the more direct route to cracking the human trafficking ring. Roxxon and files, then human traffickers.

Should be a fun weekend as long as James was up for it.

When the elevator returned her to their floor, she found Steve and James staring intently at the screen as Darth Vader warned Luke that if he wouldn’t turn, his sister would…and Luke flipped.

She wandered over to lean against the back of the sofa, and waited until the movie was over. Her two super soldiers were so engaged, they barely glanced at her—just enough to identify where she was and that she was back, then they were wholly focused on the battle once again.

When Luke refused to kill his father though, that was a pivotal moment. He could have. It would have been easy. The man was down, and if anyone in those films deserved it, it was Vader and the Emperor.

But Luke was a Jedi and he threw his lightsaber away. If not for Vader deciding to save him, Luke’s ass would have been fried.

And that right there was why she’d never be a Jedi.

She’d have taken out Daddy dearest and when the emperor crowed over his success, she’d have put a lightsaber right through him.

Two Sith. One sword.

Yep. Definitely not a Jedi.


	22. Mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has something going on...

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

**Mending**

**Clint**

 

 

 

“Daddy?” Lila whispered in his ear.

“What bug?” Clint kept his voice conspiratorially low aware his daughter kept a wary eye on where Laura and her brothers were getting ready to leave.

With exaggeration, she twisted so her back was to her mother, then she opened her jacket to show him a letter she had hidden there. “Can you get this to Auntie Nat?”

For the last four days, Laura and the kids had been his constant companions, they’d brightened his meals, joined him on his slow, circuit walks not seeming to mind his slowness, and cheered him up after PT. He wasn’t ready to send them home, but there were more Avengers incoming to the Compound and the kids had school—as Laura reminded him.

Taking the envelope, he slid it away out of sight beneath his thigh in the wheelchair. As much as he hated using the thing, it came in handy right now. “I think I know a guy,” he assured his daughter. Lila had carefully _not_ asked about Nat the whole time, and Clint had wondered but if she’d found a way to make peace with the situation, he didn’t want to upset her.

Lila stole another glance over her shoulder at Laura, then looked at him. The subterfuge was careful, because her expression brightened as if she were laughing when she looked at Laura scolding Coop as he riled Nate up, then sobered when she looked at him.

His little girl shouldn’t be growing up this fast. “Mommy’s really upset about Auntie Nat, she watches the news—even when she tells us we shouldn’t—and she gets out the phone, but it never rings.” The stubborn set to her jaw belied the way she kept biting her lip. She was going to gnaw an injury there if she weren’t careful. “Auntie Nat always calls after a mission. Is Auntie Nat not okay?”

The tremulous threat of tears hazed over her eyes. Cupping her cheek, Clint murmured, “Shh…Auntie Nat is fine.” At least now that her ass was back from wherever she’d disappeared to on her _job_. “I know she misses you terribly, all of you. But sometimes…sometimes we have to keep our distance because it’s safer for you.”

“I don’t want to be safe,” Lila declared, her eyes narrowing and nose crinkling. “I want to see her, and I want _you_ and Auntie Nat to be safe.”

“Oh bug,” he settled a hand on her shoulder as he sighed. When she would have opened her mouth, he shook his head and she closed it.

Sometimes, Lila was a little too much like Nat. Stubborn. Set in her ways. Fearless. Then it would twist inside of him somewhere that once upon a time, Nat had been just like Lila and then life had chewed her up and spit her out on the other side. They’d abused a little girl so much like the daughter he adored, that Clint wanted to kill every one of them. His only regret was most, if not all—now at least—were already dead. You couldn’t kill a ghost.

He caught sight of Laura heading in there direction, and he shook his head at her again. She nodded and returned to the boys. Clint needed the right words here. Lila’s idealism ran deep, as did her genuine faith in the people she loved. But she was also a kid, and kids needed to have that affection reinforced. Nat’s absence was a hole she felt. Just like Clint’s absence was.

Sometimes he was an absolutely terrible father.

“Auntie Nat adores you,” he told her seriously. The tears in her eyes when Lila insisted she was going to tell Nat’s story someday so everyone would know what a hero she really was hadn’t been the product of sadness, but because Lila overwhelmed her with her faith in her. “There are very few things in that Auntie Nat finds precious. What she adores, she _has_ to protect. Right now, protecting you means she has to keep her distance.”

Lila glared at him. Okay, so she didn’t want to buy that, fine. He’d prove it to her because he got it. He really did.

“Bug, she’s keeping her distance from me for the same reason. It doesn’t mean she cares any less, but do you know what happens when we force her hand? Make her come in close when it’s not safe? When we could get hurt because she’s there?”

With a slow shake of her head, Lila’s glare faded.

“She puts herself at risk. Because there are people who would use us to catch her, and if she thought it would protect us—she would let them.” Nat’s care for her own safety was negligible at best. But she had developed a very narrow circle of those she cared about and Clint didn’t doubt for an instant that if it were a choice between herself and one of those people—he, his family, Stark, the pair of assholes who conveniently forgot to mention she was taking jobs (yeah, he wasn’t over that yet), and the other Avengers to a certain extent—she cared about, she would choose to sacrifice herself every _single_ time.

Lila’s face crumpled. “I miss her, Daddy.”

“She misses you too, I know she does. I’ll make sure she gets this letter, and I’ll find a way for her to get you a message, but right now bug, the best thing you can do for her is to take care of you, and believe in her. Know she misses you too, and it makes her smile when she knows you’re happy. Can you do that?”

His little girl nodded seeming far too serious and mature for her age. “But you’ll get her my letter?”

“I will,” he promised.

“And if I write her more, can you get her those, too? I don’t want her to think we’ve forgotten her.”

Fuck his life. “I promise.” Then Lila lunged forward and hugged him. He ignored the twinge in his shoulder as he snuggled her close. “I’m going to miss you, bug.”

“Me too Daddy,” she whispered against his ear. “But I’ll write you, too.” Then she leaned away, all sober seriousness. “Should we have a secret code?”

Too. Much. Like. Nat.

But the corner of his mouth kicked up. “What did you have in mind?”

An hour later, he sat on the deck watching the jet take off. The rental car Laura used would be returned quietly, after they’d wiped it down in a small town in Vermont. In the meanwhile, Sam had volunteered to take them home so they had a shorter journey and could stay longer.

Laura had given him a kiss on the cheek, then said she’d call later after everyone was safe back at the farm. They wouldn’t likely be back before Thanksgiving in a few weeks, and if not then—then definitely Christmas. It seemed eons away.

Movement in his periphery reminded him of Vision’s presence. “Vision.”

“Clint.”

“Did you need something?” He hadn’t had many conversations with the android since returning. He half-expected him to blame Clint for coming to get Wanda, but Vision hadn’t said anything of the kind. He’d seemed more circumspect and distant, but that could just be him.

“Wanda is returning?” It came out more a question than a statement.

“I know.” He turned the chair now that the quinjet was out of sight. “Tomorrow, right?”

Vision nodded slowly. “Mr. Stark has sent a plane to collect her, and I will meet her at the airport. Then we’re returning here until her meeting with the committee.”

Yeah, The committee. “That’s all a formality though, she’s been extended the same full pardon as the rest of them, right?” Them.

Not him.

Not Nat.

Them.

As verklempt as he was at his family leaving, he could still be a little salty about the rest.

“That is my understanding,” Vision told him. “Yes.”

“But you’re concerned.” He hazarded the guess since Vision was even here discussing it with him. The android didn’t exhibit the same kind of micro expressions as the average person.

“Well—in a manner of speaking, yes. Wanda…Wanda may think badly of my complicity in keeping her at the compound. I understood Mr. Stark’s reasons, and I endeavored to make the stay as pleasant as possible.” He hesitated.

“But she was still a prisoner.”

“In a fashion…”

“Vision, let me give you some advice, would you like that?” He met the other being’s gaze and raised his eyebrows. The android nodded.

“I—yes, I believe that would be ideal. You know Wanda rather well and seem to be fond of her, or so I gathered from the few interactions I witnessed and the fact you came for her.”

Clint snorted. “Wanda’s a good kid who’s had a difficult life. You were supposed to be a friend, and I don’t think she is angry with you so much as the situation. But…” He held up a finger when Vision seemingly relaxed—if Clint read him right. “This is the important part, you were in the wrong man, so just own it. You could have all the valid reasons in the world, but you were a friend and you became her jailor. So own it, apologize for it, and build from there.”

He nodded slowly. “I am not comfortable with the idea that I may have genuinely harmed her when that was not my intention.”

“We all do bad things for good reasons, even if we don’t see that they’re bad things. The part that matters is you own it, you take responsibility for your choices, you apologize and mean it, then you make time to make it up to the person you’ve wronged.”

“Is that what you are endeavoring to do with your wife?” Nice shot, if he’d actually been aiming to take one. In all probability, Vision was just trying to figure it out.

“That’s called none of your business,” he told him firmly. “You asked me about Wanda, I gave you my opinion. But Vision—one man to…another? Don’t hurt her again. I may currently lack the ability to take you out, but I’m a determined guy, I’ll find a way.”

“It is not my intention to harm her,” he assured Clint. “In any fashion, and I would rather you were not forced to harm yourself if I were to make another mistake.”

“That goes double for me, man.” He glanced to where the quinjet had been.

“Would you like some assistance in returning inside?”

“I’m good,” he told him. “Think I’d rather be out here for a while.” The chill in the air had begun the slow prompt of crowning the green trees in varying shades of gold, reds, and burnt oranges. Soon, the whole area would be alive in color. Then the weather would turn even colder.

“Very well, if you require my assistance, simply tell Friday. She will let me know.”

“Yep. Thanks man.”

Then Vision left him alone and Clint dug out his phone. It had buzzed a couple of times in his pocket while Vision spoke to him but he wanted privacy in case it was…

 **Natasha** : _Heading out in a couple of hours. May be 3 days, hopefully not longer. Will keep in touch when I can._

 **Natasha** : _How are you doing? Really?_

**_Just sent L & kids home. Leg not bad. Walking a lot—well hobbling. What’s the job? Do you have backup?_ **

**Natasha** : _The kids look good. Great pics. Keep up on PT, wish I could help. Standard op, no need to worry._

 **Natasha:** _Yes, I have backup._

**_Send one of the idiots over so I can give them a letter for you._ **

**Natasha** : _They’re not idiots._

**_When they forget to give me status updates, they’re idiots._ **

**Natasha:** _You’re mad at me. Not them._

**_Trust me. I can be mad at all three of you. I’ve got skillz._ **

She sent a laughing face emoji and he shook his head.

 **Natasha** : _I need a favor._

**_Name it._ **

Despite his irritation with the guys, he was irked more with himself. If she needed something, and was willingly asking him, he wouldn’t tell her no.

 **Natasha** : _Tony’s overdoing it. He needs a sounding board. You’re good at listening._

**_I’m also stuck here._ **

**Natasha:** _When has that ever stopped you?_

**_If he goes on verbal safari about nanobots and micro-engineering—you owe me._ **

Still, he smiled. There was something he could do—and he didn’t need his arm or his leg to do it.

 **Natasha:** _Keep up with your PT. Don’t make me come out there and kick your ass._

**_As if you could._ **

**Natasha:** _Leaving soon. Phone might be off. But I’ll have laptop—and I’ll check email. Promise. Take care of you._

**_Take care of you._ **

He cleared his screen and purged the messages, then stared out at the treeline. “Friday?”

“Yes, Mr. Barton?”

“Is Stark busy?”

“He’s sleeping, Mr. Barton. I would rather not wake him.”

“Not a problem. Let him know when he wakes up that I’m bored, and he should give me something to do—even if it’s just giving him a hand with whatever.”

There was a moment of silence, then, “Of course, Mr. Barton. A Red level notation has been added to contact you in the event Boss is awake for longer than twenty-four hours at a stretch.”

A Red level notation. Clint smirked. “Thanks, Friday.”

“You’re welcome. Should I ask Vision to help you inside yet?”

“Nah, I’m good right here.” He turned his face up to the sun and did his best not to think about all the people winging away from him.

 

 

**Wanda**

 

She’d packed a small bag. Amazing how much of her life fit into a tiny suitcase. Not that she’d ever had very much. After their parents died, it was just she and Pietro. And after Strucker and Ultron, it was just she—and the Avengers. But nothing good seemed to last, and since returning to Sokovia—she thought maybe she’d found some peace. She went to Pietro’s grave and to where her parents were buried, a marker really for them. In truth, she had no idea if their bodies had ever been recovered or if there had been something bury.

The marker for her parents surprised her, and she had to wonder which of the Avengers had done it. Clint? Natasha? Maybe even Stark?

The last name gave her pause. Tony Stark had been the focus of her rage for over a decade. Hating him was so much easier than mourning what she’d lost. But hate wouldn’t keep her warm at night, and it made for lonely comfort during the day. Helping with the memorial park, replanting trees, and spending time with orphans younger than she had given her some perspective.

Then Steve and Clint called her separately and told her she could come home. Home. Home should have been Sokovia, but the fist in her chest when Clint said the committee had cleared all the Avengers, and they were no longer wanted, and she didn’t have to hide. More, she was welcome back to the compound—everyone agreed, they’d love to see her.

Well, not everyone. Neither Clint nor Steve would directly address her questions about Natasha. Sokovia wasn’t in a vacuum, she’d seen the news reports and the worldwide manhunt—Natasha had sided with Tony and the world hunted her more astringently than it had she or Sam or even Steve. That made no sense. Worse, the last time she’d seen Natasha—she’d hurt her.

Yes, she’d been angry. Natasha sided with the people who’d decided to keep her prisoner. She was supposed to be her friend, and she’d been the one grounding point during all of her training—Natasha had _never_ been afraid of her, even after she’d glimpsed into the darkness in her mind and seen nothing but pain. She’d been teaching her, buoying her self-confidence, and she was so strict.

Then she came with the same people who wanted to make her a prisoner, and eventually had.

A chill raced over her arms and she tightened the leather coat. The red leather jacket had been Natasha’s. She’d borrowed it from the other woman—well, taken it really—when she and Pietro joined the Avengers on the way to Sokovia. Natasha hadn’t been there though, she’d been taken by Ultron.

The moment Nat had seen her in the jacket, she’d asked why was she wearing her coat and there was a cold, assessing look in her eyes. Wanda had seen the darkness in her, the pain, and the blood—and she’d taken a step back from the potential threat. She’d _harmed_ Natasha—the Black Widow—and now she was wearing her coat. Maybe it hadn’t been the best plan. Steve hadn’t hesitated to say she was on their side, but Nat had merely shaken her head and said, “Still doesn’t explain my jacket.”

After Sokovia, after the battle was over, and the dust had cleared, she’d found Wanda again. This time she’d been sitting on some cold floor inside the hellicarrier—SHIELD’s, hadn’t they been destroyed?—on the floor next to the table where Pietro’s body lay draped in a sheet like he was sleeping. Natasha hadn’t said a word, she’d just sat with her for hours. Then when it was time to leave the ship, and to remove his body, she’d stayed with her.

She’d always meant to return the jacket, but she never had and then at the airport—she’d seen Clint and Natasha teasing each other while they fought as if it were all a game and she’d seen red.

And she’d thrown Natasha into a luggage loader.

 _“Looking over your shoulder needs to become second nature,”_ Natasha used to tell her, almost as often as she said, _“Act, don’t react. When you react, you are coming from a place of emotion and it scatters your focus. When you act, it comes from logic and reason and it will keep you grounded.”_

She’d reacted.

Then it was done, Wanda ended up on the Raft and she hadn’t seen Natasha again. Clint insisted Natasha wasn’t the bad guy and later, Steve told her it was Natasha who let he and Bucky go.

But they were all forgiven and they could all go home—because of Natasha. She’d done something, and Wanda didn’t have all the details yet, but she’d made it possible.

“Ms. Maximoff?” A man said, and she glanced up from her tea to meet the gaze of the attendant who’d admitted her to the private lounge when she’d checked in at the airport. Stark Industries was flying her back to the States, and they provided her with her ID and her accomodations.

“Yes?”

“We’re ready for you to board the plane, and you should be on your way within the hour.” Everything about him seemed sincere, but she couldn’t help the quake of nerves. Tony Stark had been associated with so many of the bad things that happened to her. How could she trust him in this?

Act.

Don’t react.

Tony Stark believed he had a reason for his actions. The man would do anything to overcome his past and make right his mistakes. She’d seen that in his mind, too. The darkness there hadn’t been all that different from Natasha’s, but where hers had been constrained and cold, his had been wild and chaotic, edged in desperation to make amends.

In offering her this olive branch, he was perhaps attempting to repair the past between them. So what was she prepared to do?

Act.

“Thank you,” she told him, and took a final sip of the lukewarm tea, before picking up her bag and straightening the red leather jacket. She’d taken Clint’s advice and had lost the rings, and the makeup. She’d even pulled her hair back into a ponytail. But the jacket she kept. “How long is the flight?”

“About ten hours, ma’am. We should be arriving in New York just before dawn. There is also a bed on board if you’d like to make yourself more comfortable and sleep.” The late flight meant she was already tired, but she didn’t imagine she would be able to sleep.

The attendant led her through a quiet maze of corridors and then out onto the tarmac where the Stark Industries jet sat waiting. At the foot of the stairs, he wished her a pleasant journey and she took a breath as she glanced over her shoulder and then around her. There were others working, loading planes, doing maintenance—moving from the terminals out to the large garages where planes were housed. Her attendant was already halfway back to the building.

No malicious threats seemed to focus on her. At the top of the stairs, a woman waited wearing a pleasant expression. She offered to take her bag when Wanda reached the top step, but Wanda tightened her fingers. It was all that she had, and it wasn’t much.

Once seated, she tightened her seatbelt and declined a drink before pulling out her cell phone. The plane’s doors were closed, and they were taxiing so swiftly it reminded her that flying aboard a private jet definitely had its perks.

**_Departing Sokovia now. Flight scheduled to arrive AM, in New York._ **

**Clint:** _Fly safe kid, and relax. You’re safe._

How had he known?

**_Are you sure you don’t have powers you haven’t told me about?_ **

**Clint:** _Trade secret._

She laughed, then shut off the phone for takeoff when the pilot asked.

Turning her head to the window, she gazed out at the darkened city as they began their climb. The country where she’d been born wasn’t her home anymore, but she left so many parts of herself behind—not to mention Pietro. He’d mock her melancholy if he were here, and tease her until she did something fun.

After she saw her friends, and maybe after she’d made amends, she’d come back.

Act.

Don’t react.

The mantra pinged around in her head.

Her first act after she saw the team—find out about Natasha.

Her second—find Natasha.

 

 

**Peter**

 

 

Peter slid in the door as his cell phone rang, and he got it out and answered as he tossed his bookbag into his room. “Hi Aunt May, yes—already home. And yes, I’ll put the casserole in the oven.” He did not gag as he said this. The tuna casserole was the least offensive of the meals she put together.

“I have to work late tonight, or I’d be there. But do your homework, eat, and then do something fun—like watch a movie or call Ned.”

“Are you telling me I’m boring?” He grinned.

“I’m telling you that you’re always busy, six AP classes, academic decathlon, the Stark internship…” She chided him. “You need to remember you’re a teenager, Peter. Have fun, get into some trouble.”

He laughed. “Okay I’ll work on getting suspended tomorrow.”

“Don’t have that much fun,” she admonished. “But, kiddo, I worry about you.”

“I’m fine, Aunt May. Really. I like what I’m doing.” Sure, he’d given up band, but being Spider-Man was more important than winning regionals. He stuck it out with the decathlon because of Liz and Ned. He also still had the Stark Internship, which was everything. He cut his gaze toward the calendar, and three more days to make it before training with Natasha. The last four days of not patrolling had made him restless—but he was about a week ahead on his homework, so that was something.

“Okay, I’ll try not to nag. Have you thought about the winter formal?”

“Um, no.” The word squeaked out of him. The dance wasn’t for another six weeks. Not that he had any intentions of going. Liz probably already had a date, and he didn’t want to spend the evening hanging out awkwardly at one of the tables while everyone else was dancing especially since he didn’t even know _how_ to dance. “No,” he said more firmly. “Finals are the week after that, and Mr. McCreary is going to hand out the design specifications for Robotics any day now—Ned and I have some ideas, but I just need to see what he wants us to make.”

And if he could build something that would impress Mr. Stark.

May sighed. “Well, maybe think about it? I can take you out to get a new suit, and it could be lots of fun. You’re only a teenager once, you know.”

He didn’t say thank God, because being a teenager was kind of sucky somedays. “I know, Aunt May.” After dialing the oven to the right temperature, he fished the casserole out of the fridge. “Food’s in the oven.”

“I’m going, I’m going. Love you, Peter.”

“Love you, too,” he could say it without reservation or embarrassment. May deserved to hear it often. She worked so hard to make sure he had everything he could possibly need. After setting the timer, he took out the garbage, wiped down the kitchen, and then went hunting for the vacuum. Since he had plenty of time, he took an armload of laundry down to the basement and got it started. May’s scrubs piled up when she did double shifts, so it would be nice to make sure she had all fresh and clean ones.

Back up in the apartment, he set another timer on his phone to swap the laundry into the dryer and then headed to his room. He had a paper due in Lit, and he’d already read Dante’s _Inferno_. Booting up his homemade computer, he waited for the programs to load and bounced a ball off the ceiling, and the caught it. He divided his attention between bouncing the ball at different angles and flipping through his notebook for the math syllabus. Four chapters ahead of the rest of the class, he should probably backtrack and study for the test. But it was all on quadratic equations—easy stuff.

His email came up and there was a note from Ned with several images attached. Opening it, he caught the ball and then stopped to stare. Schematics—for a new suit. His phone rang and he dropped the ball to answer it.

“I’m looking at it right now—where did you get the basic framework from?”

“That depends, what are you trying to build?” Natasha’s voice jerked him up and away from the computer as if she’d tugged his strings. He closed the email with a fast flick of his fingers, and all but ran out of the room in case she spotted what he was looking at.

“Robots,” he spit out. “I’ve got robots to build…a project. Mr. McCreary, so looking at frameworks. With Ned.” All true. He glanced around the living room. It was still a little close to his room, so he retreated farther into the kitchen. “Not that we’re doing the same project, but we talk about stuff and he likes to make plans and then I can look at them.”

“Sounds interesting,” she mused aloud. “How are you addressing the interface for the AI?”

“Not sure, I just opened the email—I think he based most of it on the information we downloaded when we hacked the suit.” Peter stopped and slapped a hand to his forehead. “I mean Ned hacked the suit. I mean the robot.” He groaned. “I’m not patrolling, I promise.”

When she chuckled, he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified. “Peter, are you building a suit?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.” Why could he not just change the subject with her? It was like she asked a question and he _had_ to answer. “I mean, I really did just open the email and I really do have to build a robot for class, it’s this semester’s final project and due before Christmas.”

“If you do decide to build it, make sure you run it past Tony before you test it, all right? Better to have the schematics approved and the right equipment to put it together.”

He blinked at the advice. “You’re not mad?”

“No,” she told him almost gently.

“Oh.” Relieved, he sank down at the kitchen table. “Does this mean I can come to the Tower for training?”

“Not tonight,” she said and he deflated all over again. “I’ve got another job to do, but I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“Really?” He sat up straight. “What can I do for you?” What could Black Widow possibly want from him? Natasha was cool, but—she was way cooler than him and so badass.

“Well, I think this could help you out with your project, too, so it’ll be a good fit.”

“Okay…” He waited, foot tapping against the floor and knee bouncing.

“Tony’s working on some new armor, but he has a lot of other irons in the fire at the moment. Since you’re interning, and I’m going to be away, I thought you might spend some time at the Tower and volunteer to help him with any open projects since you have a robot to build.”

“Mr. Stark’s not going to let me work on armor,” he said slowly. “He’s the one who took my suit away.”

“He’ll let you if I tell him it’s an assignment I gave you. Think of it this way, you’re going to learn more about the functionality of your suit because you’ll be able to see how one is folded together and programmed. Tony gets someone to follow his instructions _to the letter_ ,” she stressed the last few words, “and you prove to both of us that you’re serious about playing within the constructs of the team. The suit wouldn’t be for you and outside of a learning exercise, it doesn’t benefit you in the slightest.”

Pausing, he considered it for all of a heartbeat. “But it will help someone else? And Mr. Stark?”

“And me,” she assured him. “Can you do that without asking for any other details or pushing any other boundaries?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. “I absolutely can, Ms. Rom—” He choked off her name. Not supposed to say it aloud on any open device. “I can. I’ll do whatever Mr. Stark needs me to do. I promise. I want to help.”

“Come by the Tower tomorrow after school, Friday will be expecting you and I’ll let Tony know.”

“Thank you,” he told her, meaning it. “For the chance I mean, I know you weren’t happy with me the other night.”

“That’s done,” she assured him. “You understood the lesson, yes?”

“Yes.” He did not want to repeat it. Ever.

“Then that’s the important part, and thank you Peter. It means a lot that you’re willing to help.”

“I’ll see you soon?” He didn’t quite manage to keep the hopefulness out of his voice.

“As soon as I’m back. Take care of yourself…and Peter?”

“Yes?”

“You’re doing a good job even though I know you want to be out there. Good work.” Then she was gone and he stared at his phone with a little grin. Yes, not patrolling was killing him and making him restless, but she just asked him for a real favor and complimented him.

“Yes!” He said, fist pumping. Then his phone alarm went off. The laundry was done, and he needed to put it in the dryer. He grabbed some quarters, then checked the stove. Another fifteen minutes until dinner was ready.

He was putting the quarters in the dryer when his phone buzzed and there was a text message from Mr. Stark. It just said homework. After hitting the button to start the dryer, he thumbed open the message and stared at armor designs and below it was a note.

_Red said you needed something to keep you out of trouble. Workshop tomorrow. First thing after school. Don’t be late._

Keep him out of trouble?

Then he remembered what she said— _Can you do this without asking any other questions or pushing any other boundaries?_

He’d said yes.

So he simply texted back, _I’ll be there Mr. Stark. Thank you._

He was almost to his apartment when his phone buzzed again. _Tell Friday what you want for dinner when you get here, and then order it for both of us._

Whistling, he let himself into the apartment and slid into the kitchen to grab the casserole out. He got to work with Mr. Stark, and he got to help out Natasha. He also got see how real armor came together, and not just after his own suit but a brand new one designed by Mr. Stark himself.

The rest of the night was spent reviewing Mr. Stark’s plans in between eating casserole, finishing the laundry, and telling Ned they had to hold off on his suit plans. They weren’t ready for that, but they could work on their robots.

The biggest problem he saw in the equations and designs was the fact the level of force applied to the interior of the armor would be equal or greater than the possible force encountered outside the armor.

So they needed to make it as flexible as Peter’s suit, but tougher than Mr. Stark’s. The would take some work…

 

 

**Sam**

 

 

After departing the Barton farm, while cloaked to make sure no one noticed the quinjet coming or going, Sam debated whether to call Steve or not. Since they’d gotten back, he’d been—different. Distant. More distant than he’d been when they were in Wakanda, and Sam wouldn’t mind, but after the last couple of years working with Steve day in and day out, he considered himself something of an expert on the guy’s moods.

The hunt for Bucky had worn on him. The Accords, the loss of Peggy, and fighting Tony—all of it wore him down. But they were all back, and the team was knitting back together including having Barnes with him full time, so Sam had to wonder—what the hell?

Rhodey mentioned the Natasha situation a couple of times, and his worry about Tony’s obsession with clearing her. Then there was the fact Barton never mentioned her—though to be fair, Sam didn’t really know Barton all that well. He’d been retired for most of the time Sam had worked with the Avengers. Steve just changed the subject.

Steve and Natasha had been close for years, she was there the day Sam met him, and when they showed up on his doorstep after finding out about Hydra—together. When they got the New Avengers together after Sokovia—Steve and Natasha, together. She was his right hand for the team while Sam had been his right hand on the search for Barnes.

But the Accords happened and she sided with Tony, then she showed up at the funeral. Sam had kept his distance when she came to talk to Steve. He hadn’t heard any of their discussion. When Geneva happened, he’d followed Steve there and they’d managed to get eyes on her. She was alive, rattled—if the woman ever got rattled—but alive.

Then the airport.

She was still fighting on Tony’s side.

And after the fallout, after Steve got them out of the Raft—he’d said nothing about Natasha except she let he and Bucky go. That was it.

Not another word.

Now, Steve kept his distance and rarely reached out for a run, or to grab a dinner or even just to hang out. They may not have been joined at the hip, but they’d been friends and now he’d been relegated to glorified acquaintance. He had his best friend back. Barnes in the ice in Wakanda had left Steve bereft and he’d avoided the team, and spent most of his time in the lab where Barnes slept.

Maybe that was just it. He had Barnes back, no one needed two best friends. That was all well and good—Sam wasn’t jealous. He wasn’t.

At least he didn’t think he was.

Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling Steve was hiding something and that—that was weird. He was the most honorable, upfront guy Sam had ever known not to mention a bad liar. No, Cap was the guy you wanted right there because he told it how it was and he held the line—so why did it feel like he was there and not there at the same time?

After checking the controls, he sent a message to Steve. _Free for dinner? Maybe grab a couple of rounds of pool?_

The answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, and he was almost back to the compound when Steve responded.

_Not tonight. Thanks for asking._

That was it.

After setting down, he called Rhodey and the colonel answered on the first ring. “Hey…you free for a drink tonight?”

“I can be. What’s up?”

“I’m worried about Steve.” As much as he hated to admit it, he really was worried. “And you mentioned something about Tony the last time we talked.” It was after the reception in DC when Tony and Steve headed back to New York with Barnes. The three of them thick as thieves, and it just didn’t match with their choices over the last few months.

“I’m heading back to the Compound in an hour. Order some Chinese?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you then.” They disconnected and Sam stared out at the compound. Maybe he should make better friends with Barnes, see if he knew what was going on with Steve, but that didn’t seem likely—Barnes couldn’t stand him and didn’t pretend otherwise.

He went through all the post flight checks and locked down the quinjet before heading inside to order food. Hopefully whatever was going on with Steve wasn’t bad, but recent experience suggested it probably wasn’t good.


	23. Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Natasha begin mapping out her infiltration of Roxxon...

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

**Planning**

**Bucky**

 

_New Orleans_

 

While Bucky couldn’t say he’d much imagined New Orleans, the city was both everything and nothing like he thought it would be. Their flight landed mid-evening, and a car waited for them right on the tarmac. The driver, a man who introduced himself only as Lance, didn’t argue when Bucky went over the car before letting Natalia climb inside nor did he complain when neither Bucky nor Natalia would allow him to handle their luggage.

Bucky took his role as Ms. Rasmussen’s security seriously, even as he found a kind of dark entertainment in Stark adding him to the books as actual security for Stark Industry employees—or one employee specifically. Natalia had given him some reading material for the flight, keeping the verbal details light while they weren’t alone.

Fifteen minutes after Lance dropped them off at a very nice house in the Garden District, Natalia shed Nadja Rasmussen, while Bucky checked in with Steve. His best friend hadn’t been thrilled they were both going to be in limited contact while they ran the job on the human traffickers—but Natalia hadn’t mentioned the second job until they were in flight and she hadn’t told Steve at all. Having just spent three days worried about Natalia, Bucky understood. At least, he was with her on this trip and he gave Steve his word he’d keep him in the loop as much as possible.

The drop dead gorgeous red dress paired with a fall of perfectly black hair and a distinct lack of a photo static veil had given him pause. Despite spending the entirety of the flight alone, he’d kept their contact impersonal—because the brown contacts, altered features and wire rim glasses partnered with the blunt cut blonde hair wasn’t his Natalia.

This version wasn’t either, but those were her stunning green eyes, plump lips, and amused smirk.

“I thought we were going to scout the facility?” Roxxon’s research facility was located outside of New Orleans proper, isolated behind several layers of security and the details on the StarkPad had been sketchy at best.

“We are going to gather some intelligence,” she assured him, then tilted her head as she studied his appearance and giving him a peek of her tongue where it pressed against her teeth. “But we need a way in, and I need some information before I can slice their security.”

“You filling me in on why we’re breaking into a multi-billion dollar company’s research site?”

She met his gaze. “How much do you want to know?”

“Everything I need to know.” He could have stopped on the first word, because it was true, Bucky wanted to know everything. The Soldier, however, had been stirring more and more since their arrival. The fact they were alone, keeping their physical distance despite their intimacy, and the profound focus in her manner kept transporting him to other missions, where his assignment as her partner meant they were close even when they couldn’t be together and everything had to be compartmentalized—emotions, touch, and information.

“Let’s get you changed. I have a suit for you to wear, and I’ll brief you.”

She warned him not to unpack his bags. The house was lovely, but they weren’t going to stay here. When it was time to become Nadja Rasmussen and Bucky Barnes, they would return. The suit she set out for him was a dense weave material, and while it was similar to the formal wear he’d dressed in for the meeting in DC, the clothing felt different.

“Not quite bullet proof,” she’d informed him as she smoothed down the front of his jacket before fixing his tie. Having her take charge of his appearance was a heady sensation. She’d refused to pull his hair back, instead she’d brushed it into smooth waves, then scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Keep this…any issues with getting to your guns.”

The suit was cut perfectly to hide the pair of shoulder holsters and he had no restraint in removing the weapons. The belt had a garrote hidden in the buckle, and a pair of small fist knives slipped into the leather.

“The shirt and jacket together will take up to a .45 slug, and you’ll get bruised, but it won’t penetrate. The pants are similar, but you’ll feel the kick a hell of a lot more.” She knelt then ran her hand down first one leg, then the other, His cock stirred with interest at the contact, but she adjusted the ankle holster for a third gun, and then the knife sheath for the second. He wore another knife sheath on his right forearm, between shirt and jacket. All he had to do was flick his wrist to depress the ejector and slide the knife into his hand.

“Avoid direct shotgun blasts, and we’re fucked if there are any armor piercing rounds.”

The sight of her on one knee before him dried all the moisture in his mouth. The corners of her lips tilted as if she could read the lust on his face. Knowing Natalia, she could. Not that she hid the heat in her own eyes, giving him a good look before her professional mask slipped into place.

Assessing her skin-tight sheath of a dress versus his armored suit, he raised a brow. “If I need to worry about those things, Natalia—what are you going to be doing?”

“Distracting them,” she told him with a knowing little smirk. Yes, distracting is definitely the word he would use. Smoothing a hand over her hip, he groaned. She wasn’t wearing even the suggestion of panties.

Arching a brow, she shook her head. “Focus, James.”

“I’m very focused,” he assured her, and stroked her hip through the dress with his thumb. “Exactly where you want everyone focused.”

“True—but I want them distracted by trying to imagine me out of the dress—you already know what I look like.”

“Hmm,” he grunted in appreciation. “Finish the briefing before I consider refreshing my memory and make us late to whatever assignation you’ve set up for us.”

She rolled her eyes, but when she described to him the situation at Roxxon, the substance Steve had been exposed to—the one that parked him in isolation for nearly twenty-four hours—and the type of threat it could prove to be to Steve, not to mention everyone else, his ardor cooled.

“So we need to get inside, install the worm and get out from a secure facility with nothing publicly available about their security systems, or layout so you know where in the building the server farms are versus the labs with the highly volatile and toxic substance that could kill us all?”

“More or less,” she told him. “Piece of cake, right?”

“You and I have very different definitions of cake,” he murmured, but he tapped two fingers against her side as she leaned into him and he considered the situation. The more he contemplated it, the less he cared for her going in—which had to be her plan. Infiltration was her bread and butter, they’d practically breastfed her on these types of assignments. “I’m your exit plan.”

It was the only conclusion.

She nodded once. “Hopefully one I won’t need if all goes according to plan.” Which was a fifty-fifty gamble under the most ideal situations, and their current lack of vital details did not make this ideal. “For now, we’re going to a club where I know a guy who knows a guy, and we’re going to get the specs and a keycard.”

“Just a club?” Natalia loved to downplay issues. Then again, the certainty that this was nothing new for them swarmed over him and the Soldier shrugged off any concerns about the location. They would be there together. Nothing would touch her that they didn’t allow the privilege.

“More neutral territory. We can go in armed, and we won’t be searched, but don’t draw your weapon and don’t fight while we are inside…”

“And if someone attacks us?” Because he sure as hell wouldn’t allow either of them to just take hits.

“Trust me when I say, that the person who violates neutral territory won’t survive very long. But they won’t—too many people use Limbo to conduct business they can’t anywhere else.” She slid her arms around him. “I want to brief you on everything, but we don’t have time. Trust me?”

It wasn’t even a question. “So after we get the information, what’s next after that?”

“I thought we might get changed and go take a look at the facility itself, then I have a place in Slidell we can use.”

“Safe house?”

She canted her head to the side, and said, “Yes.”

“So, neutral club, find your guy, get the specifications for the facility and lift a key card, then scout the facility itself before I get to take you to bed? Do I have the mission briefing summarized?”

Tipping her head back, she studied him from under her lashes and chuckled, “Vy mozhete sognut' ol'khu, yesli delayete eto medlenno.” Russian idioms were awkward, but yes, alder branches would bend given enough time, and they could make anything happen if they had the time.

“My sdelayem vremya,” he murmured assuring her they would make the time, then dipped his head to steal the kiss he’d been contemplating since she appeared in that dress. A long slow lave of her lower lip, before he fastened his mouth to hers and thrust his tongue against her teeth. She opened to him, coiling her tongue around his as her nails skated along the nape of his neck, a light stroke, and a tease. When he would have lifted his head, she caught his lower lip and sucked on it, the barest sting of her teeth to sharpen the pleasure. “The next time we get away—let’s make it on less urgent business.”

“We’d never get out of bed then,” she teased.

“Exactly.” This close, he couldn’t miss the shiver that went through her or how her eyes cut away a half-second later. “Hey…”

“We have to work James,” she murmured, pushing against his chest to extricate herself.

“We will,” he steadied his arms, if she truly wanted to get away, he’d let her go. But the flash of unease worried him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she lied, then met his gaze and shook her head. “No—I don’t know. Just…not used to this I guess. It’s…right but…”

“You’re waiting for the door to be kicked in.” He couldn’t say he wasn’t. Part of the reason he’d pushed so hard in the bathroom when she’d shown every hint of being as interested as he was he hadn’t wanted them to be interrupted. They’d taken her away once.

“It’s foolish and we have a job to do…”

“It’s not foolish,” he told her firmly, and the Soldier stared down at her every bit as much as Bucky. “I know what it is to have nothing, Natalia. Having you back, having Steve in my life again—there’s a reason I didn’t and don’t care about that pardon. I’m a wealthy man without it and I don’t dare get greedy. They took you once…”

“No one is taking me away.” The cold, diamond hard conviction in her tone dared anyone to try. “No one.”

“And no one is taking me from you,” he promised her. “Not again.”

Then her expression crumpled, the curtain coming down long enough for him to see the loneliness beyond. It killed him. Steve was right, she’d gone decades without them—without anyone. Having people had to be as foreign to her as having freedom was to him.

The date with Steve had tied her in knots and he hadn’t understood it, not until he realized it was her first date. The first time someone had ever taken that kind of time with her. They’d never had that, he didn’t need every memory to know what they’d built had been cobbled together from stolen moments, ephemeral and easily scattered into the ether when even that foundation had been stripped away.

“You don’t have to tell yourself you’re okay if you’re alone, if you don’t want to,” he said slowly. “And if you need exit plans to feel safe, that’s okay, too.”

She didn’t shy away from him, but she did bring her hand up to cup his cheek. “I’m trying to not do that.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I mean it. It’s what we do Natalia, it’s part of what they made us to do.” He always knew how to leave a room, who had the weakness he could exploit, and what weapons were easily at hand. It was second nature to him, and what measure of ease he’d found was when he had her there. Steve helped, God knew he helped, but it was just better when she was there and the best when both were in his line of sight and easily shielded.

“I don’t want that part of them anymore.” Then she licked her lips and smoothed her hands down his jacket. When she stepped back this time, he didn’t fight her. “I want to just—do our jobs, and be us. Or learn who we can be without that worry, without having to look over our shoulders. Even if that’s never possible, I still want it.”

“We’ll make it possible.” He tucked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “We have a secret weapon now…”

At her raised eyebrow, he grinned slowly.

“A stubborn super soldier who doesn’t know when to quit. He’ll come for us every time.”

She chuckled. “Yes, he will….and we’ll go after him the same way.”

“Damn straight.” He nodded, then released her before he just tossed the whole damn mission. He’d distracted her enough. She pressed a chain and tags into his hand.

“Keep those for me until after.”

Where she was going they would definitely stand out in that outfit.

He slid Steve’s dog tags into his pocket. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them. “After you, doll.”

Thirty minutes later, he followed her in the door of _Limbo_ , the club name didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. She hadn’t been wrong when she described the patrons as armed, dangerous, and wary. Cycling lights, and a pulse pounding beat to the music put him on edge. Threat assessment in this place promised to give him a headache. He shifted his position to keep at her side, and slid a hand against her lower back. She cast a smile at him as she guided their weaving path through to some booths in the back corner.

She understood his need well. When she slid into the booth, he settled against the side, back to the wall and watchful. Natalia crossed one leg over the other and it didn’t take long for a waitress to make her way over to the table. She eyed Bucky briefly, but focused on Natalia. “Welcome to Limbo,” she greeted her, bracing her tray at her side and there was a knife in the sheath attached to the bottom catching the lights before she shifted her grip. “You have reservations?”

Natalia removed a solid black business card with no print on it from just above a breast and slid it across the table. The waitress lifted it and set it on her tray. A light illuminated it from below, and all Buck could catch was an hourglass.

The waitress’s eyes widened a fraction, then she immediately returned the card and said in a slightly unsteadier voice, “Who do you require?”

“Lover boy.”

Keeping his face expressionless, he didn’t miss the waitress’ darted gaze at him before she looked at Natalia once more. “Can I get you a drink while you wait?”

“He’ll bring it.” Then Natalia flicked her gaze away from the waitress to the couples writhing together on the dance floor. The music definitely had a suggestive quality, but Bucky didn’t stop staring at the waitress as she seemed to take a minute before she hurried off. He tracked her across to where she ducked behind the bar and whispered in the ear of one of the bartenders.

The man had auburn hair, the lights caught the red in it when they danced over him. He was lean, about 188 centimeters and 81 kilograms. Dressed casually in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a pair of black trousers, he gave off an ordinary air but there was nothing average about the bartender particularly because he wore a pair of dark sunglasses. The man nodded to the waitress and she hurried off without a second look in Natalia’s direction.

It didn’t take the man in question long to approach with a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. He barely gave Bucky a once over as he slid into the booth and set the bottle on the table. “Mamont,” he said by way of greeting as he turned the bottle to face her.

“Spasibo,” Natalia murmured, not reaching for the bottle and not really glancing at the man—at least not directly. Bucky kept an eye on him and divided his attention to the rest of the bar. There were at least fifty different handguns of various calibers present, and more than double that many knives he would bet. That was just on the people he could see on the dance floor and moving about the shadowed edges.

Natalia’s guest pulled out a pack of cards and began to shuffle them. “The way I see it, not the best time to be paying a call on folks.”

“There’s never a best time, there’s only the time we have,” she replied artfully, then she deigned to glance at him.

“Fair,” he dealt the cards, dividing the first six into three each, then setting three more down face up on the table between them. “What brings you to town, boo?”

“What always brings people to New Orleans?” She barely looked at her cards, before she set the black business card down. Lover boy added a different card at a right angle to hers, it was deep red, and equally unmarked.

“Business is pretty slim these days, and you’re too hot for the Quarter,” he dealt a card to her, then to himself, before flipping another up on the table. The seven, two, and eight from different suites didn’t pair well with the single ace of hearts.

“The Quarter is always steamy, you just have to know where to go to get what you need.” Natalia smiled slightly and slipped a ring off her pinky finger, one Bucky hadn’t even realized she’d put on. It was a solid band, but possessed a weave of dark gold against the platinum. She placed it atop the cards. Lover boy smirked and he reached up to remove a single gold hoop from his left ear and set that next to her ring.

Instead of dealing another card, Lover boy opened the bottle then poured them both a drink of the icy vodka. “Sometimes, but there’s a special breed of heat brewing these days from a lot of different directions. Makes a body hungry and more than one too greedy to wait.”

Natalia shifted, uncrossing then recrossing her legs. She’d freed her right leg up, where the knife sheath rested inside her thigh. “And how hungry are you?”

Lifting his glass, he seemed to stare at her from behind his sunglasses. “I’m stuffed, boo.”

She nodded, then picked up the second glass and they tapped them together before each tossed back their drinks and Natalia pressed a kiss to the edge of the shot glass before she set it atop the cards and next to the jewelry.

While Lover boy didn’t kiss the shot glass, he set it inside of hers, then dealt them each a last card before adding the queen of spades to the five face up in the center.

“Woman, you always get your card.”

Natalia just smiled. “And you always like to play games.”

“True, but I don’t get to see you often anymore. You’re too busy playing hero.”

A careless shrug from her. “And you’re running one of the most lucrative guilds in the country. We all have our burdens to bear.”

“Point.” He gathered the cards together and resumed his shuffling. Whatever game they’d been playing, she’d passed the test. Natalia swept the cards, jewelry and shot glasses back to herself. The ring settled back on her pinky, and he continued to study he manipulated the cards. “What do you need?”

“Specs for the Roxxon facility outside Ponchatoula.”

Lover boy whistled. “Pricey.”

Another shrug.

“And dangerous. No good word on those folks, boo. You sure you want that?”

Natalia just stared at him.

Sighing, he nodded. “Take me an hour. What else you need, boo?”

“Keycard. Preferably one I can slice.”

“That’s a little trickier,” he said with a slow nod, breaking up and putting the stack of cards back together again. Then he flipped the top card over to the queen of spade and chuckled. “And still, you win. I should learn not to ever bet against you.”

“I wasn’t aware you had ever bet against me,” she teased him, but the cool warning still moved under every syllable. Lover boy glanced at Bucky considering.

“Yours?” He asked her, and she just raised her eyebrows. “Just curious.”

Bucky half-hoped she claimed him aloud, but understood that for every exchange, she surrendered a piece when she answered. The game they were playing had very little give in it.

“Keycard?” she reminded him.

“I can do it, but it might be tomorrow. Sliceable keycards for that joint don’t come cheap, and you might owe me a favor after that.” He reclaimed his shot glass from the stack and poured them another pair of drinks. “So what is it worth to you?”

“The Watchdogs.”

Lover boy blinked. His hand stilled and his head jerked. All faint, almost insubstantial moments, but there and gone in a blink—he wanted what she offered, and Bucky scanned the room again. Even with the music and the lights, there were ways to monitor conversations. But the patrons seemed to carefully avoid looking in their direction for longer than a split-second, as if they knew they weren’t supposed to see or notice.

The waitress Natalia had shown the card to, however, had not reappeared. A glance at his watch said it had been less than fifteen minutes. Maybe she was on a break.

“Done,” Lover boy said. “Is that it?”

“Unless you feel like throwing in something a little extra for good karma.” The dare practically dripped from the words before she tossed back her swallow of vodka. Natalia could kill that whole bottle and not be rocked, but the fact she drank at all suggested he should relax, at least some.

But something was off and he didn’t want to relax. Not when she’d revealed herself as herself here, even if it were only to two people. He had eyes on only one of those two.

“I’m not a fan of charity,” Lover boy said.

“You’re not a fan of flesh peddlers and child sellers, either.”

Lover boy’s knuckles went white. “Chere, you cost me so much whenever you come to town. It is a good thing I like you.”

“And a better thing that you’ve never been able to sleep with me.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You don’t know what a good time you are missing.”

“We’re far better acquaintances,” she told him and he shrugged.

“Expensive ones,” he said motioning to the bottle. “What the hell…who do you want?”

She slid around the table until she was next to him, and while Bucky didn’t move, his gaze fixed on the other man’s hands. Even one out of place gesture and he’d break them. She murmured in Lover boy’s ear, and made a show of it. Anyone looking at them would see two lovers, so Bucky shifted his stance, his gaze seemingly on the room but he didn’t miss a single nuance of their interaction.

Lover boy nodded, then turned to murmur in her ear, and he slid an arm behind her on the booth, but the hand remained flat to the backing and not on her at all. It was practically invisible to anyone not him anyway.

With an abrupt nod, Natalia slid away and resumed her original seat closer to Bucky, but her expression was all pleased cat with the cream. They were definitely putting on a show.

“Angeline is going to take a few nights off. But after that, rumors will do what they do…” Lover boy said as he tucked away his cards, and caught the earring she flipped back to him. He stood. “I’ll leave what you need with Carson in the bookshop.” Then with a smirk at Bucky, he glanced at Natalia, “He’s definitely yours.”

All she said was, “Once I have all of it, I’ll drop you a postcard with what you need.”

“Usual place?” He verified and she nodded. Extending his hand, he smiled when she touched her fingers to his and he bent, brushing a kiss to her knuckles but his attention wasn’t on her but on Bucky.

Little fucker wanted to wind him up.

“ _Toujours enchanté belle araignée_.” He gave her hand a squeeze as he straightened.

“ _Soyez prudent joueur, il mord._ ” The French rolled exquisitely off her tongue.

“Yes,” Bucky added for effect and took no small amount of pleasure in how the other man couldn’t quite cover his flinch. “I do.”

“Duly noted,” Lover boy told him, meeting his gaze directly despite the sunglasses. “I like this one much better than the archer, sweet. You should hang onto him.”

“Go away,” she murmured, and Lover boy laughed, then turned away before saying, “Watch her back. Bounty hunters, far left corner. They won’t touch her here, but they’ve been watching since she came in. And I’ll delay them following.”

Bucky had tracked them, they were among those who glanced away repeatedly. But they’d been aware of her.

He nodded once. Taking a beat or two to memorize their faces.

Then Lover boy was gone and Natalia tilted her head toward him. Her gaze flicked once to the same corner, and Bucky nodded before holding out his hand. She slid her palm across his and he helped her to stand. Then she leaned up on her toes, pressing against his side. “There’s a lovely rear exit, second floor, room 217. Care to join me?”

He smiled slowly, then slid his hand to her back and took care to guide her toward the elevators while his body was firmly between hers and the so-called bounty hunters. One of whom stood and started across the dance floor as if to intercept them, when a waitress collided with him and dumped drinks everywhere in a noisy crash that pulled everyone’s attention.

By the time the hunter extracted himself, Bucky had Natalia in the stairwell hidden on the other side of the elevators even as those dinged closed after he’d reached in and pressed the fifth floor. On the second floor, he glanced both ways in the hall before allowing her out. She didn’t argue, just moved with him.

Room 217 had a coded keypad, and she entered six numbers to unlock it. The other doors were carded, but not this one. Inside, she didn’t slow on her way into the bathroom, and then stepping over into the tub and pressing on the tile to open another door locked into the wall. Bucky was right behind her, down the external steps, then down a long winding hallways, that opened up on a street over a block and a half away. He wanted to strip off his jacket and wrap it around her, but the gun holsters made that impractical.

He settled for wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she looped an arm around his waist, and every time someone looked like they were taking too long a glance in her direction, he bent his head and kissed her.

By the time he reached the car, her lips were puffy and her cheeks a bit scratched from his stubble, and he honestly wasn’t sure if he was using the PDAs to make people look away or because she was so damn sexy when she worked.

At the car, he did a sweep of it before he put her inside and slid around to the driver’s seat.

“You do realize I know how to drive don’t you,” she commented as she stripped off the black wig once he was behind the wheel. Taking the driver’s seat had been a habit, and he slid a gun out of his holster and put it in her hands. Her smirk, made him grin. “I thought you were the better shot.”

“I’ve been watching you in action since the late 40s, Natalia. Your graceful beauty is only surpassed by your brutal efficiency. Now where am I going?”

He had the vehicle in motion, and his gaze on their surroundings even as she swiveled in the seat to watch their six. Pressing a button on the dash, a GPS came up, and she pressed it to start. The instructions were specific, which was good because he didn’t know New Orleans, but the feel of being behind the wheel sent a measure of control singing through him.

“We’re good,” she said after several blocks as he headed for a bridge to head across a lake. Settling forward in the seat, she studied him and he spared her a glance.

“Do I want to know how you met him?” He didn’t need to specify the who.

“Right after I left the KGB, I traveled Europe, and eventually made my way to the States, he was a pickpocket—tried to lift my wallet.”

Bucky didn’t laugh, because he already knew how that story ended. “How old was he?”

“All of eight,” she murmured. “I gave him a lesson in doing it better, then let him go. Didn’t see him again until he sixteen and by then I was picking up work from the assassin’s guild, and he was looking to dip his wick.” She slipped her heels off and propped her feet on the dashboard. “Took him on a couple of jobs, and disabused him of the notion he was right for the work.”

“Now he’s a thief and runs an information network and a sanctuary in the middle of New Orleans.” His brilliant Natalia certainly knew how to pick them.

“We do each other favors, but we always keep it balanced. He’d do it for free if I allowed him.”

The transactional world she’d grown up in defied such conventions—even if she would do favors for others and never demand payment.

“I like him,” Bucky told her.

“He seemed to like you,” she said with a grin. “There’s a place to pull off in about a mile, we can change there before we head on to the facility.”

Nodding, he plucked the dog tags from his pocket and passed them back to her. She took them, then kissed his fingertips in thanks. It was another hour to get to the Roxxon facility after they'd changed, and they parked and went overland despite the marshy environs.

“I almost take back my desire to avoid frosty weather,” she muttered as she slapped at a mosquito. They didn’t seem all that interested in him, but of the two of them, he’d rather bite her, too.

Moving with Natalia was natural as breathing. The perimeter of the facility was heavily fortified. It took them time to find a position that let them see the buildings in the distance. Even with his enhanced vision he needed the night vision binoculars.

“That’s a lot of security,” he said after thirty minutes of watching a tanker truck arrive with a fully armed escort, and it had to pass through three secure checkpoints on its way.

“Feels almost military level.”

“That’s because it is,” he warned her, eyeing the combat arms on the guards surrounding the truck. A man in a white coat emerged from one of the buildings, and he had harried scientist written all over him. It would take him a few explosives, and a grenade launcher to penetrate the initial wall of security an invasion might trigger if she were deep in the bowels of that facility and he’d still want backups. “You’re going in undercover aren’t you?” It was the only rational method to infiltrate with so many layers.

“That’s the plan,” she said, shifting her angle to look farther to the east. He followed her line of sight and frowned at the huge tanks—also under heavy guard.

“You’re sure this isn’t a front for a military le—” Though he had been speaking quietly, movement to their west had him pressing a finger to his lips and then pressing them both down into the marsh grass. A foot patrol passed within ten meters, and he tracked them carefully.

With hand signals, they retreated and then settled into another depression and he counted the minutes—and the foot patrol returned within thirty minutes and they didn’t seem to be following a pattern. A four man team, for an external perimeter sweep on a heavily fortified facility?

Everything about this place triggered bad memories of an entirely different military base in West Germany, and the need to gather data. He’d had to send Natalia in alone then, too. She’d been shot.

Twice.

And she still had to get herself out. He’d been left unaware of her injuries until she’d arrived at the rendezvous, and collapsed with the intelligence secured on a micro camera in her pocket.

They said nothing, and he waited out the next pass of the patrol. Twenty-seven minutes this time and it was a different grouping of men. They gave it one more pass, and the grouping that came through was similar to the last, so perhaps a shift change.

It was just after midnight. Did they do eight-hour shifts or four? This type of tense security required hyper vigilance. Four-hour intervals would make more sense. They were best trying to penetrate three hours into one of those shifts.

It was after two before they withdrew and made their way back to the car. Saying nothing, he stored their gear and then slid into the car, giving her the driver’s seat as he kept a gun on his lap and his attention on everything around them. She was still in her tact suit, and her red hair had been pulled into a ponytail at her nape. There was a glimpse of the dog tags under the edge of her suit, but she’d tucked them securely before they moved out.

The air conditioner chased away the sweat clinging to his skin, but he couldn’t relax. When Natalia feathered her hand over his thigh, he covered her hand with his and kept it still. Her hand was ice despite the heat, and he split his attention to study her profile. Shadowed, her expression didn’t betray much.

He reserved his comments until she reached their safe house for the night. Unsurprising, she didn’t return to the first place they’d stopped but an entirely different house located in isolation behind several trees. It was a little cottage bungalow looking house.

“Front and rear doors, only one bedroom, and a bathroom. I’m going to do a sweep. Take our bags inside?” She asked, before slipping the keys into his hand. Tasks divided, they moved. He trusted her to know what she was looking for, and he only approached the front door when she motioned it was clear before vanishing into the shadows beyond the building.

The night sounds resumed their quiet symphony, and the interior was as humid as the exterior. Setting their bags down, he did a full sweep of the interior. It was small, and tidy. A little frilly, he would think, for her tastes but maybe she preferred something softer now and again.

Fifteen minutes later, Natalia had switched on the air conditioning units and stripped out of her tact suit. He followed her into the cool shower and stood there, one arm braced on the wall while she washed her hair. “If you run into issues in there, it will take too long for me to get to you.”

“I know,” she told him, and she didn’t make light of it. “I don’t plan to run into trouble. I just need to get to their server farms, and they had most of their security on their research buildings.”

“And if the server farm is in one of those buildings?” He didn’t mention the unknown bioorganic substance prompting this entire exercise.

“Then I deal with it.” She tilted her head back into the water to rinse it, and he studied the way the water ran over her face and then down her neck. The chill in the water cooled her flushed skin and peaked her nipples. Sliding a hand around her neck, he pulled her forward and pressed her forehead to his.

“I don’t like it.”

Blinking the water from her eyes, she met his gaze. “I’m not overly fond of it myself. But I can do this…I’ll have the layout before I go in, and the power conduits and the wiring will tell me where I need to go. I’ll slice the keycard so that I have access to those areas, then I just go to work with the crowd.”

“They have electronic scanners on the gates—the photo static veil can stand up to those?” The wave readings had been high, and that had been at the distance. Every one they saw entering had been facially scanned.

“I can go old school with shifting my look. I’m not as dependent on the toys as everyone else,” she rose on her tiptoes and nuzzled his chin. “C’mon, let’s wash off and then get something to eat. I’m starving.”

They weren’t done discussing this, but he let her maneuver him under the water even as she gradually turned up the temperature. When she rinsed his hair and then went to wash it, he dropped to a knee so she didn’t have to stretch. Pressing his forehead to her sternum, he gazed at the scar he’d left on her abdomen as she scraped her nails lightly against his scalp.

The action should soothe him, but he couldn’t quiet his mind.

“Will the schematics include their security protocols?” It was all well and good to project where the server room was, but what about retinal scans? ID codes? DNA samples? There were a whole lot of layers they didn’t know about. “Are we rushing this? We could spend a few days measuring their security to find the best penetration point?”

“James,” she said, nudging his head back to rinse out his hair before she lathered some conditioner through it, then added the same to her own hair. He glanced up at her, and waited, but her expression had gone thoughtful.

“Natalia?”

“I’m of two minds, and I’m arguing with myself. Give me a moment.” The disgruntlement in the set of her lips pulled a smile from him. He knew that expression, instantly. Natalia didn’t like her odds, but her instincts were telling her something else. She had to weigh experience versus her gut, and while he trusted _her_ , her gut often involved her doing highly questionable things and surviving against the odds. One of these days, the odds would win their roll of the dice.

He allowed her to rinse out his hair, and then he took over soaping them both down quickly before trading out under the water with her so she could rinse her hair. When they’d finished, he pulled back the curtain and handed her a towel.

“I want a month to plan this op and make sure we have all our angles covered, particularly in light of the substance.”

In that they were in total agreement. “But?”

He ran a towel roughly over his body, then his hair to wipe away the moisture. Between the shower and the ancient air conditioning kicking in, the little house was almost pleasant.

Natalia wrapped a towel around her head before straightening and drawing a second one to begin drying off. “But we don’t have a month. There have three incidences with this material in the last ten to twelve days that we _know_ of. How many haven’t been reported because the Avengers weren’t called in? How many more do we risk if we wait the time to build out an op we’d both be comfortable with?”

He couldn’t disagree with her there.

“And you see my point,” she sighed tiredly and leaned against the counter. “On our side, I have a thumb drive to get in the building with. I can hide that in any number of ways. Once I’ve installed the worm, it will do what Tony needs it to do and I can destroy it and leave. I’m not going out with anything on me that should lead them to stopping me.”

“Should. Not will. Should.” The flaw in the plan was she would be solo. The time it would take him to get to her was an unacceptable risk. “This is the type of mission when you don’t care if the agent is lost.”

“I know,” she assured him.

“I care, Natalia.” Flat, unyielding, and the Soldier was right there beneath the surface of his skin. “Convince me this is not going to kill you.”

“I can’t—every mission could kill me. You know that. It would be naïve to think otherwise, and you and I are not naïve.”

Bucky hung his towel, then hers, before reaching for the one wrapping her hair and beginning the gentle process of squeezing the excess moisture from the length. He eased the chair to move the dog tags back to hanging between her breasts before hanging up the last towel, then running his fingers through her hair to comb it.

“Then tell me what you plan to do.”

“I’m going in the front door,” she said with a smile. “No one ever expects that. They guard against intrusions that designed not to be invisible. I let them see me, every step of the way, nothing to hide. No one looks for the IT girl, there to fix a WiFi problem.”

He understood the concepts. “But they’ll know if they have a problem…”

“Oh yes,” she said with a slow, playful smile that eased the tension from his spine. She had a plan. Or at least enough of one, she had tickled herself. “Just because I don’t need toys, doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”

She lifted her wrist to show off the bracelet Tony had given her.

“Friday?” He didn’t think the bracelet could receive so much as transmit.

Natalia beamed. “Close—but this gave me the idea. I just take a couple of radio wave jammers in and drop them off on my way in—the rolling outage will spark issues and there I am on my gleeful way to my office, just humming happily…pig tails, I think I would work and definitely a businessy looking plaid skirt—or dark colored skirt…white button down.”

Bucky groaned, and slid his arms around and cupped her ass as he lifted her. “You are not walking in there like a fuckable catholic girl.”

“But it’s Louisiana, high population of Catholics, and I look pretty good in the skirts and pig tails.” The spark of humor in her green eyes taunted him.

“Just—no. I already want to kill them all thinking about them seeing you that way. If they actually see you that way, we might as well just plant explosives and bring the whole thing down.” Once upon a time, such a violent and visceral reaction might have bothered him. While she was teasing him, he wasn’t exactly joking.

“My point Soldat,” she reprimanded him as she cupped his face and wrapped her legs around his waist. The contact had his cock gliding against her slick labia and he had to grit his teeth to keep from bumping his hips forward in search of seating himself without even a kiss. “Is that there are a lot of ways to be very obvious about my presence doesn’t raise red flags. Trust me?”

“Always,” he growled. “It’s them I don’t trust.”

She closed the distance and kissed him slowly. The contact sent an electric pulse through his system, and she reached between them, grasping his cock and he gasped against her lips as she angled him and then lowered herself on him without any preparation…

“Natalia…” He groaned at the slick heat enveloping him.

“James,” she answered him with a low moan. She locked her gaze on him as she inched lower and lower and he had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from just rocking into her. “You mentioned taking me to bed earlier…”

Teeth gritted, he straightened and began to walk, every step bumping him deeper into her and she clung to him, kissing a path along his jaw to his ear. At the bed, he turned and tumbled onto his back, bracing her but he seated to the hilt as her knees landed on either side of him.

Gazing down at him, she smiled. “Hey…”

“Hey,” he whispered, then dragged her down for a kiss perfectly willing to distract themselves.

They could finish their planning in the morning.


	24. Cascade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad dreams and unexpected issues create problems for Nat's day

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

**Cascade**

**Natasha**

 

_Some rational part of her brain understood he had to be playing her, putting her in charge so he could take more. Stepping into the hit to win the fight. Everyone wanted something. Everyone wanted to take. Possessing her could be just another game—the boys all seemed to think so._

Stop yourself.

_She knew it, understood she was breaking all the rules, and didn’t give a shit. Being near him disrupted the white noise—the buzzing under her skin. Connections seemed to light up in her mind. She grabbed his shoulders and swung her leg over, gliding until she straddled him. His cold eyes warmed to something incandescent as he made a wordless noise of pleasure, and she was lost._

They’ll know.

_All the stress of life—the missions, Karpov, the Red Room—the weight of keeping all of it together lifted at the sight of his joy as he reached for her. She collapsed forward, and he met her halfway, his fingers curling around her neck as she found his mouth with her own._

You’re never to want.

_Despite his earlier frost, he pressed against her, drinking her in like he needed this. He gathered her closer, and suddenly he was crowding her, surrounding her. His mouth crushed down on hers as his hands stroked her back with such gentleness she melted into his touch._

They’ll punish you.

_This was so dangerous. She didn’t know how she was going to look at him later with this memory burning through her. Or the memory of whatever happened next. If she was allowed any memory at all…_

Fuck. They’ll punish him.

_He stood. And she needed to loosen her grip._

Just don’t…

_Careful as if she were spun glass, he set her on her feet. His breathing heavy as he pressed his forehead to hers once before he backed away, eyes still closed. His tongue touched his top lip and he groaned._

Breathe.

_The door opened. Pulse jackhammering, she pivoted to face…_

 

Natasha snapped her eyes open, grasped the gun from the nightstand, and had it pointed at the door before fully registering she’d moved. All she found was milky sunlight filtering through the curtains and beyond the walls of the—where the fuck was she? Movement next to her had her cutting her gaze left and down, a pair of cool blue eyes regarded her cautiously. He hadn’t moved, but he lay sprawled on his back, dark hair on the pillow, and the sheet draping his waist doing nothing to hide the evidence of morning wood.

Skimming her gaze south she didn’t let it linger no matter how impressive, before sweeping her attention back to his eyes. He lay with his right hand on the sheets between them, palm up and fingers loose. The metal hand had been laying against his chest but it had come up only to hold as she held her gun in an unwavering grip.

The door had opened…they were coming.

“Natalia,” he said quietly, and the past slipped away draining out of her like someone pulled a stopper and all the water cascaded down the drain. Sagging, she lowered the gun and barely registered it when he closed his fingers over the weapon and then had her wrapped in his arms.

“They were coming…” she said against his chest, the steady thump of his heart a reminder that he was very much there and not a dream.

“They’re not,” he promised, cradling her with his left hand wrapped protectively against the back of her skull. “They’re not zvezda moya, no one is coming for us.”

Closing her eyes she tried to push away the images, but one remained seared against her eyelids. Standing in Karpov’s office, empty and lost—then he’d come. He’d…

He’d woken her. He’d reached her.

And she’d kissed him for the first time maybe?

Fuck.

“Natalia,” James murmured against her hair. “You’re freezing.” Despite the complaint, he gathered her up until she was straddling his lap and his back was braced against the wall that served as the bed’s headboard. He wrapped the sheet around her and cradled her close. She spread her fingers against his bare chest.

“I think I remembered our first kiss.”

Beneath her touch, he went absolutely still. “Yeah?”

“Maybe,” she told him. But she couldn’t shake the unsettling sensation, the skitter feeling beneath her skin that came from waking out of that walking nightmare she existed in after the chair. The absolute disconnect from reality—until he’d provoked her to kiss him.

The joy in his eyes.

She pulled back a fraction and straightened to stare into his eyes. He curved a hand against her hip at first, then he began to rub his hands up and down her arms, as if trying to warm her. Even his metal hand was warmer than she was and goosebumps rippled over her flesh.

“We were in Karpov’s office…” She didn’t know where, which facility. But it had to have been his office, she’d debriefed in it before. Debriefed after many missions. “We were in his fucking office.”

James raised his brows.

“I—I’d been in the chair.” No disputing that feeling. Not after what she’d already remembered. James’ fingers tightened against her, his grip settling on her hips. “I was…just there and you came in.” Probably summoned, but she didn’t have to say that. His autonomy had been severely limited—except when they were training. “You…you must have known.” How could he have missed it? “You…you dared me…you got me to kiss you…” That part just seemed so much mist. “I don’t know if it was our first kiss now, but it felt like it was…you lit up and I remember the way you kissed me until I couldn’t breathe and then you set me aside. You had to let me go…you had to have heard them coming, but then the door opened…”

And what?

There was a blank wall left at what happened next. She swallowed hard, and blinked as she brought him back into focus.

“And then you woke up, ready to shoot whoever was there.” The calm certainty in his voice matched the similar assurance within her. Instinct. Her gut reacted. Whoever had been coming in that door—probably Karpov. It was his office.

“Fuck,” she exhaled the word, and then shifted off of him. They were both naked and in bed and she couldn’t stop thinking about Karpov. “I need coffee.” Then she walked out of the bedroom and toward the tiny little kitchen. Thankfully there was an electric kettle and instant coffee. At the moment, she’d have drunk the mud they used to have back in Russia. Folding her arms and tangling the fingers of her right hand around the dog tags, she stared at the kettle as if she could make it boil.

The wood creaked beneath his feet as he followed her from the bedroom making no attempt at silence. When his arms came around her, she leaned back against him and let him keep her upright. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She wasn’t the only one who woke to the dusty curtain of the past being snapped open, and just as abruptly closed.

They didn’t talk about it, but he was always awake before her. She never saw him sleeping. Hell, sometimes she worried he didn’t sleep. Did she challenge him on it? Or try to make him feel self-conscious? No.

Hell, he’d been back with them for a little over a month.

A month.

It seemed forever and yet…

“What time is it?” Her voice came out hoarse, raspier than usual and she swallowed. There was no moisture in her mouth.

“Barely seven,” he whispered. “You didn’t sleep long.”

“Did you?” Her eyes burned, but the last thing she wanted to do was close them again.

“Some.” She didn’t sleep much on missions, apparently not even after a vigorous round of sex that left her aching this morning. What little slickness she’d possessed hadn’t eased the burn of sinking down on him so abruptly a few hours earlier, but it hadn’t stopped her. Not when she’d craved it, and she’d gotten off—twice—before he let himself go.

The kettle clicked to off, the water boiled, and she didn’t move away from him preferring to stand there.

“You should try to sleep more,” he told her, his voice dark, and deep. “When do we have to go to the bookstore?”

“After nine,” she answered, not really seeing the counter in front of her. “They won’t be open before then.”

“Then you can sleep for another hour,” he said, giving her a gentle squeeze, but she shook her head. She wouldn’t go back to sleep. Not now. Turning in his arms, she glanced up at him. No, she couldn’t go back to sleep but she could do other things. With a little nudge, he guided her back to the bedroom, probably hoping she’d let him coax her back into bed.

“Sit,” she told him as she slipped out of his arms when they reached the bed. He cooperated, sinking down to sit on the edge of the mattress and she stretched past him to grab one of the pillows then set it on the floor between his feet.

“Natalia…” he protested almost half-heartedly as she dropped to her knees on the pillow, and eased his thighs wider with a stroke of her hands along the chiseled strength. Despite everything, or maybe because of it, he’d lost very little muscle mass. Maybe the serum meant he’d never have anything really spare even if he didn’t exercise.

Maybe she didn’t care.

It was just nice to stroke the corded muscle in those legs as he fought to hold still despite the flexion beneath her palms.

“You don’t have to,” he told her, and it wasn’t reflex. His pupils were already blowing wide from the idea alone it seemed. His breathing came in sharper little puffs. And his mouth formed a little ‘o’ after he licked his lips, and they glistened, shiny and inviting.

But she didn’t stretch up to claim that very kissable mouth. The image from her dream draped the present, ephemeral and insubstantial. But they weren’t there—they weren’t in Karpov’s office, her skin wasn’t buzzing from the chair, and her mind wasn’t that carefully crafted blank splintering under the focused connection he’d used to bring her back.

When he covered her hands with his, she smiled slowly. “Let me do this,” she whispered, serious and maybe a little desperate. She wanted to blot out that unsettling moment with something better, something—now. “I want to do this…wanted to do it in the shower, but my throat wouldn’t have been up for it.”

He lifted his left hand, and with infinite gentleness, stroked the skin of her throat where the bruises had marred the skin. “And it’s better now?” The fact he’d used that same hand to choke her once and leave his own ring of bruises just added to the shifting tide of need rising within. James would never do that. Even if the Soldier had been compelled, James wouldn’t.

She wasn’t afraid of him or his strength or how dangerous he was.

He was James.

She wanted this. “My throat is fine—do you not want it?”

“Yes.” The broken syllable escaped him. “I want it. You never have to…”

Whatever else he might have said, he shut up as she dragged her hand lazily along the length of his mostly hard cock. It had softened some, but seemed quite eager with one long, slow pull.

“Okay,” he committed in little more than a husky whisper. “Anything, Natalia.”

The flash of tattooing his name on her ass right alongside Steve’s danced across her mind, and it helped to chase away the shadows. His knees glided farther apart, creating a welcome cradle for her as she stroked him and leaned in. For the space of several heartbeats, she didn’t look away from him just stared into those heated eyes—the cool color promised ice but hid fire.

Another lazy pull, just gliding her nails lightly against the tip at the end, earned her a drop of pre-cum, and the same incandescent look from her dream. There… that look. She wanted to drown in it, but she savored it and burned it into her mind. No more forgetting. No more losing these little pieces. She would Hansel and Gretel her way across the broken terrain of her memories and gather every damn crumb she could find.

Then she’d make new ones. Ones no one could take away. She let the wonder easing the lines of his face blanket her thoughts as she smoothed one hand over his thigh and continued to pump him with firm, if gentle strokes. Long, thick, and slightly curved, his cock would be a challenge to swallow.

But she’d always enjoyed a challenge.

Easing her hand toward his hip, she pressed against him, then teased her tongue over the reddened tip, savoring the salty teasing taste of him. Sense memory was a strange thing and it spun out through her like she clung to the edges of a twirling spindle, and might fly off at any moment. What had he said that day? There was so much he could remember, but he couldn’t recall what it had felt like.

This.

She licked him again, rolling her tongue around the head, wholly focused on the action as she stroked the hot velvety skin down to the base in the same moment.

She couldn’t remember this.

The taste of him. The feel of him. The headiness of strength and power as he surrendered to what she offered. When she trailed her tongue down to follow the path of her hand, he groaned, and his hands came down to clamp the bed on either side of his legs. She earned another groan as she repeated the motion, tracing the thick vein along the underside of his cock. Memorizing every inch of him was important, she needed to know how he responded to every touch, every caress.

When his hips arched forward as her mouth encircled the tip, she dug her hand into the crease of where his leg met his body. He could easily thrust himself into her mouth, but she wanted to do it slowly, to savor her way. In some ways, this was every bit as much for her as it was for him. He relaxed his hips, settling at her urging even as the muscles in his thighs flexed, and the knuckles on his right hand went white. He restrained himself, holding still.

She indulged herself, alternating between long licks, and gentle sucking until he all but shook from the effort of keeping still. When she swallowed his head past her teeth, his moan trailed over her like a visceral caress. She squeezed her thighs together to ease the pressure she teased in herself as she pressed forward until her nose was against the tight wiry hair at the base and the head of his cock slid into her throat.

Holding her breath for six minutes had never seemed like such a valuable skill outside of combat before. Suddenly the weight of his hand was in her hair, not pushing or pulling, but stroking her hair like one would a cat and she pulled back with a slow suction pop that had him gasping as he tightened his fingers in her hair—but he didn’t pull. Didn’t force. Didn’t demand.

She didn’t care as she swept down again, and swallowed around him, her throat convulsing against the intrusion. Some part of her noted she probably tasted herself along with him, but she didn’t care. The slow, gentle thrusting of her mouth over him pulled him deep and then released him. She loved the way he filled her throat just to the point of choking, but she relaxed the muscles, indulging both of them. With each upward pull, she took a breath and then pushed him as deep as she could take.

Marveling at his steadiness as he let her control the motions and just rested his hand in her hair, as if he needed to touch her, she relished the strain in her jaw and the push against her throat. Then she held him there, curling her tongue against his base, and slid her hand from the crease of his leg to his balls and when she began to massage them, he began to shake.

The hand flexed in her hair, as if he waged a losing battle against his own control. The challenge delighted her, and she alternated strokes of her hand against his cock and another against his balls as she pulled him deep or slid him out to just the tip. A part of her wanted to push him until he broke, how long would it take? Could she shatter his control? And what would he do if she did?

She was surprisingly okay with just about any result, but breaking him wasn’t the goal. Stealing a glance upward, she almost choked on the swallow because his expression was so utterly wrecked. The pale blue of his irises was barely visible around the wide blown pupils, and his chest rose and fell with rapid panting as his skin flushed a deep red from his throat to his chest.

That decided her. She stopped playing with him and began to pursue his pleasure with every skill at her disposal, increasing the pace, and adding pressure, matching the strokes of his balls to the tangle of her tongue, and when he fisted her hair and released a strangled, “Natalia,” in warning, she locked her gaze on his face, desperate to see him let go and she swallowed against the first spurt and took him deep as he came. The bitter and salty taste heavy with the musk of his scent in her nostrils, and she groaned around him.

No sooner had she released him with a pop, then he abandoned all pretense of letting her have control as he hauled her upward and locked his mouth on hers. The kiss had her curling her toes and then tumbling as he rolled her onto her back, and she forgot everything but him for a while.

The was what she’d needed.

Another memory to imprint, to hold onto, and to keep.

Hers.

 

 

By noon, only the haze of that morning pleasure kept her cool as James stared fixedly at the plans spread out on the table. She’d taken over the loveseat, laptop balanced in her lap as she worked with the code to slice the keycard. The scanner had already broken down the base code, the signals, and the calls it responded too. Lover boy had come through for her, he’d gotten her a senior engineer’s pass.

She definitely owed him one for this. It made slicing it so much easier. All she had to do was greenlight anything not already coded to yes. Keycards were a gift to modern spies. Where before she needed pass phrases, correct diction, and the whisper of a hope the guards didn’t know every face, now she needed a single white card she could clip to her belt.

Damn, she loved technology even when it was a pain in the ass.

“Nothing about these plans indicates where the server farm would be.” James said after a long stony moment of silence. She’d only been half-listening as he ticked off the various corridors he’d identified—all seemingly leading nowhere. Why have hidden corridors in a facility if they went nowhere? Of course they wouldn’t, that meant the plans weren’t the latest ones—or that the plans and schematics Lover boy was able to obtain had been modified to keep certain things hidden.

In all likelihood it was the latter and not the former, but she didn’t want to debate this with James again. Soldat grew more forbidding with each argument. Twice he’d decided, rather autocratically, that the mission needed to be scrubbed. Twice, she’d merely stared at him until James swore and paced away.

Soldat wanted to protect her, and he was used to being in charge. Maybe in the balance of the years they’d shared, he had been. It wasn’t too hard to accept that. She’d been raised to be obedient, to follow orders, and to have someone holding her leash. Soldat was better than most, of that she had no doubt.

But that didn’t change the fact that no matter how much they reclaimed, she was not that girl anymore. She refused to surrender her autonomy to anyone and not just because they didn’t have the exact blueprint that read  _bad things here_  and  _even worse stuff here_.

Quite simply, she had to approach as she had so many missions, relying on her expertise and her experience. There was such a thing as overthinking a plan, and while contingencies were ideal, circumstances often dictated they were also a luxury. The keycard was almost ready.

Lover boy had kindly included shift hours at the facility, and the fact that general staff was only on site for two shifts a day. Overnights were strictly limited to the upper echelons of the research division and their security forces. Employees were encouraged to be off property by ten.

She checked her watch. The next shift began in a little over ninety minutes. It would be the best window to walk herself in the door. Then or at dinner time, there was a secondary shift change between five and six pm, but that was more an exodus than an entrance, and she stood a better chance of being noticed heading in when so many would be heading out.

Then again—early evening after a long day, halfway through a shift for second shift security—they’d be less attentive. Unless Roxxon had afforded some kind of gold star security, and no doubt they could afford it.

“Maybe if we both went in…”

“If we’re both inside, we don’t have backup outside, and the point is to not be noticed, and James—I adore you, but you are exceptionally memorable.” From his physicality to his mannerisms to his arm—how could anyone not notice him?

“Doll, I can’t even touch a leaf in your book.”

“But I can be anybody,” she pointed out. “They won’t notice me if I don’t want them to.” She smiled. “Women are rarely perceived as a threat. You know this.”

He glared.

“I didn’t make the rules or men to be so stupid,” she told him and he snorted.

“Most men, not all,” he said with an exhale. “But you’re right. I hate it but you’re right. Walk me through it again.”

And though she was as tired of not having all the answers as he was, she went over the plan from the top—again.

 

 

She arrived at Roxxon’s first gate promptly at two. A mile earlier she’d let James out geared up and carrying a bag. Her comm was currently inactive and tucked into her earring. With the bracelet glimmering under the hint of cloud-obscured sunlight, she passed her keycard over the security officer. He was a beefy, six foot four man probably about two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and beer gut. He also favored his left leg, and didn’t quite extend his knee as he walked. There was a grillwork of scars hidden under a tattoo along the side of his neck.

“Hi Bob,” she greeted him with just a hint of Lover boy’s accent. He was a local and she’d taken the time to adopt it years ago, never knew when it would come in handy. He swiped her card, then glanced at the image on the screen.

Naomi Roehmer had reddish-brown hair often kept up in a sensible bun, even if wisps of it escaped. Her dark brown eyes were a tad on the drab side, so she wore the sparkliest, brightest blue wire frame glasses she could find to give her a hint of fun to go with her dour demeanor. The frames in her favorite color matched most of her clothes including the simple pale blue A-line blouse tucked professionally into her navy slacks with a pair of dark blue pumps to complete the look. Other than her bracelet and earrings, she didn’t favor jewelry while at work.

“Been a while since you last logged in here Ms. Roehmer,” the guard said, handing her back the keycard and pulling out a clipboard. “Did you have an appointment today?”

“I’ve been stuck in Los Angeles,” she flipped her sunglasses up and widened her eyes. “For. Months.” She dipped her accent on those last two words for emphasis. “Have you ever been to the so-called City of Angels, Bob?”

A grin softened the hard lines of his mouth, and he braced the clipboard against his hip as he shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Then count yourself lucky. The people out there cannot drive, they are  _always_  on their phones, and I don’t think they’d know a hi and how are you if it bit them on the butt.” She gave him an artful grimace. “I just got home and I got a call first thing this morning telling me they wanted me to run some server backups this weekend. I half thought I’d say no, but…” She let that trail off.

“Bosses, what are you going to do?” He sighed with a nod.

“Right?” Then she smiled. “But at least I’m home in time for the Voodoo Music and Arts festival.” She touched her teeth to her lower lip, coquettish and cute. “I would have been so upset if I’d missed it.”

“Nothing like it anywhere in the world,” he agreed, bracing his hand on the roof of her car. “You have someone to escort you Ms. Roehmer, it can get pretty lively at that event.”

“I know,” she told him, waggling her eyebrows with just the right amount of playfulness. “Even better than Mardi Gras.”

He laughed and patted the roof of her car. “I’ll call ahead for you, so you don’t have to explain to the other guys. But welcome back, Ms. Roehmer. If you’re free tomorrow, would you let me buy you some coffee to welcome you back?”

“I’d  _love_  that Bob!” She twisted to pull a pen out of her purse and motioned to his clipboard. He passed it right over, and she skimmed the check in log. Only a half dozen arrivals noted in the last hour and not nearly as many as she would have expected before then. So a lightly staffed day.

Good to know.

She scrawled a phone number at the top, then handed it back and made no attempt to pull her hand away when he ran his fingers over the back of it. “Call me later?” Damn if she didn’t even sound cheerfully hopeful.

“It would be my pleasure,” he told her, and his gaze dipped down to her very properly buttoned up shirt. No curves for him to ogle. Poor man. “Until then…”

“Thanks Bob,” she said with another sunny grin, before sliding her sunglasses into place. He nodded as he retreated into the gatehouse, and the gate rolled open for her. Accelerating, she pulled right in and followed the long drive. Her earring vibrated and she pressed it once.

“Natalia, men are not that stupid—you are just that dangerous.” There was a distinct note of pride in his voice. “I have eyes on you.”

She grinned, but only said, “Going radio silent again.” Then she tapped the earring once. James could hear her, but she didn’t want to  _receive_  signals until she was clear of all electronic monitoring. The transmissions were on a different frequency, and a lower band one they used to use back in the KGB. Almost no one used it anymore.

Very convenient.

As promised, Bob had called ahead and at each checkpoint, she only had to perform minimal flirting to get through after presenting her keycard. She also got two more date offers. Three for three was almost a new record for her. Thankfully, slicing the card provided them with access to a data point she’d inserted via their Los Angeles facility—which still had an external line connection. It probably wouldn’t survive a deep dive. As long as she didn’t give them a reason to look too closely, she should be fine.

The employee lot was gracefully decorated with trees for shade and even sported a few picnic table areas for smoke breaks or eating lunch outdoors. She parked at the edge of the lot beneath a particularly wide oak. With a half glance toward the perimeter, she resisted the urge to blow James a kiss. Naomi didn’t know James, and it would be awkward as hell to play off.

After slinging her messenger bag purse over her shoulder before she grabbed the paper bag with the remnants of her croissant lunch and her lidded cup of coffee, she locked the car with a beep, and then sauntered her way across the parking lot aware of the cameras tracking her movements. She wasn’t in a hurry and she had nothing to hide. The humidity had a gleam of sweat on her face before she made it to the doors—thankfully she’d gone artful with the cosmetics and not deep. A little bit of putty smoothed on gave her nose a slightly more rounded look and gave her chin a more angular one. The change in hairstyle and the addition of sunglasses all modified her look.

At the door, she tapped her bracelet to activate it. Then used the keycard to swipe her way in. She followed the hallway toward the main reception area and the security desk. It was painfully white inside, enough that even with the sunglasses, it felt like she had sun blindness. She paused to crumple up the paper food bag, squeezing it tight before dropping it into the trashcan.

Coffee cup in hand she made her way toward security. She set her cup and keys down in a dish on the conveyer belt along with her sunglasses, then flipped open the messenger bag—after a minor adjustment to grip the side for one quick squeeze—to reveal the laptop, a sandwich in a Ziploc bag, her wallet, some cosmetics, and oops a packaged tampon rolled out. The guard all but flinched in his haste to look away.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll grab it on the other side.” She hurried through, all green lights, and quickly gathered together her items. The man gave her a quick nod, and looked anywhere but at her bag or her.

Too easy. Even the suggestion of menstruation made people uncomfortable. She mimed a sip of her coffee as she made her way to the elevators when there was an alert behind…

“Ms. Roehmer!” The guard called and she pivoted to look at him expectantly. He had a phone to his ear and one hand on the counter top. “I’m sorry, but you’re with the IT and Engineering group, right?”

“Yes, I’m just here to finish up some paperwork on a project…”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Mr. Baskin needs you over at the server room. There’s an issue with them crashing or something…”

She tried not to look too stricken, but shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I really am only here for a bit, surely someone else…”

“Mr. Baskin says you’re the one who’s here so you’re the one who needs to fix it.” The guard almost look sympathetic. “She’s on her way, Mr. Baskin.” He hung up the phone and motioned for her to return. “Give me your card, I’m going to make sure you’re clear because they just upgraded security to the whole facility and the server farm is over near Building B.”

He motioned to the window and she looked across the expanse to the building closest to the tanks.

“I thought they were all underground,” she told him, as though puzzled why her information would be incorrect and more than a little disappointed that her quick trip wouldn’t be so quick after all.

“They are,” Rodney assured her. “You’ll take those elevators there, swipe the card, and then down to sub-basement one. From there, follow the hallway to the second set of elevators, then down to sub basement two.”

This was all floodlands. How the hell were they building that deep? She allowed some of her concern to bleed into her expression.

“Don’t worry, they use all kinds of special polymers building it out, but they didn’t want to lose anything to another flood, so they sealed them up underground.” Rodney patted her hand as he handed her the card back. “Now you should hurry, Mr. Baskin really hates to be kept waiting.”

She glanced at her coffee cup then him and Rodney waved his hand.

“Go on, take it. Between you and me, you’re probably going to need it.” She fumbled with the card for a moment, nervous and a little impatient, then hurried at a quick, short-stride pace to the elevators. Sub-basements.

Their comms were not going to work.

“Don’t freak,” she murmured as if giving herself a pep talk. James, however, would not be mollified by the message even if he needed it. The elevator doors closed, and she blew out a breath. “Shouldn’t take long at all. Stay cool.” Then she was heading down. Subbasement one wasn’t just below the main level, but at least two levels down. Despite the lack of numbers indicated on the panel, she could count. Most elevators took roughly a second to travel between one floor and the next.

This one took over two and a half from start to stop. The doors opened to another painfully white hall, and massively recycled air. Coffee cup in hand, she stepped out and made a point of looking left and then right. There was nothing to the right. That made it simpler.

She squared her shoulders and walked like a woman on her way to a job she really didn’t want to do. The second set of elevators required another keycard scan, and then she was inside and pressing the button for the next floor down.

While Natasha didn’t usually consider herself claustrophobic, Naomi apparently didn’t care for being underground, when they were this close to sea level, and chances were it was water outside those walls and not earth. Images of walls spiderwebbing and letting water spray in like the crack in some movie dam amped her pulse.

She tapped her foot as they descended for exactly a second before the door opened. This level was painted a pastel green; it was so subtle she almost didn’t notice it right off. The air was similarly recycled to the previous level, and what vents were visible were too small to be accessed even by her. Making her way down the hall, she was somewhere between the buildings by her reckoning. The lights flickered once, then came on again and she paused to glance at the fluorescents. Another flicker.

Interference with the radio signals for their WiFi shouldn’t affect the power.

At. All.

“Ms. Roehmer,” a voice bellowed from ahead and she redoubled her pace. Mr. Baskin was a thoroughly unpleasant little button of a man who stood barely an inch taller than she in her low-heels. His tie was a wreck from tugging on it and his face red. “It’s about time.”

She would have apologized, because that was what staff usually had to do with a boss even when they were an asshole, but he didn’t give her the time.

Seizing her elbow with a biting grip, he hurried her down the hall. “Something is wrong with the whole system. We need the bridges back up, immediately. Everything in the cooling chambers is run through the algorithms on the servers and if we don’t get the lightbridges up, well…I don’t need to explain it.”

They arrived at the server room door and he used his own keycard to unlock the airtight door and the rush of frosty air inside assured her that yes—there were hundreds of computers and functioning equipment on the other side of the wall.

“Fix it,” the man ordered imperiously. “Or you’re fired. I need to get back to the tanks and see if we can manually reset them.” Then the door closed behind him before she could say a word.

Another flicker, this time of the lights in here and she frowned.

The power distribution on the schematics indicated that power resources had been localized to each individual system. The power for the lights, for example, was not connected to the power for the cooling systems or the computers. They ran on multiple generators, and switches. It would take a cascade failure to affect  _all_  the systems. So whatever this was—it wasn’t her.

Setting the coffee cup down on top of one of the server rack nearest the door, she shifted her grip on the messenger bag and walked over to one of the terminals. It wasn’t quite a Cray, but they definitely used some of the latest equipment. She booted up the screen, and moved to the admin windows.

A few commands and she had an error report running. Just telling her the lightbridges were down didn’t begin to let her know  _which_  ones and what they were supposed to connect. While that report ran, she studied the server racks. Some very helpful, and very anal, employee had labeled them with their rack IDs and system names.

The report on the terminal indicated errors across the board. It wasn’t just a couple of lightbridges—it was all of them. Every single one capable of communicating beyond the server room were erroring out.

Not. Good. Without the lightbridges, Tony’s worm would be effectively trapped in the bottlenecked server room. Even WiFi wouldn’t give him the access if they didn’t have the high-density transport available to act as a conduit.

Which meant, she really needed to fix this.

She flipped open her laptop and ran a cable from it to the server terminal. She wanted her own system if she had to rewrite code. Once she got it pulling the light bridge code, she switched to a different terminal and checked the file IDs for creation and update dates.

Every single one had been updated in a massive push that rolled out at noon. Who updated server protocols and lightbridges at noon on a Saturday? In an ideal world, she should be able to back them all out and roll it back to the previous install—except the previous installs were no longer present on the system.

Naomi straightened, stressing about the fact she might not have to worry about either of her jobs if she couldn’t resolve this. Natasha was already returning to her laptop and the code she’d downloaded. Adjusting the glasses she didn’t need, she leaned forward and began going through the code line by line.

Mr. Baskins returned forty minutes later cursing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Shh,” she said without glancing at him.

“I told you to fix it,” he snarled, and she could practically feel him vibrating as he stalked across the floor toward her. “What are you doing?”

Putting a finger to the code on her screen, she said, “I’m tracking down the problem in the code. I’ve found two places so far, but this is the third. I’ve got to rewrite it, and then push it to the machines. Whoever handled the last update didn’t take into account the lack of courier services without a hardline. So the handoffs are just dumping packets.”

Baskin blinked at her vacantly. “I don’t  _care._  Can you fix it?” He poked at her forehead once. “Or are you too stupid to understand your job?”

Naomi sucked in a breath, and her eyes gleamed over with tears even as her cheeks heated with a blush. Being insulted and degraded by the boss was humiliating enough. Having him touch her as well just made it all the worse. She was just here to do paperwork, not fix some other asshole’s failure to plan.

“Of course I can fix it,” she sniffled even as Natasha eyed him, because if little Napoleon thumped Naomi again, he may have to fill out a workplace incident report when she snapped his finger off and shoved it in his ear. “I’ll work much swifter if you don’t yell at me.”

The man threw his hands up and stalked off. “We’re twenty minutes away from redlining. Fix it before then or you may not be able to leave at all.” Then he was out the door again.

Redlining.

Resuming her focus on the code, she started making the changes. Someone had quite systematically gone through and at every point of boot code, had purposely sent it to look for a dummy connect.

This wasn’t a mistake.

It was sabotage.

Just what they all needed. Someone else to fuck up what Roxxon could barely seem to control. When the third fix still resulted in errors, she did a search for boot codes and found another ten areas in the code.

If she ever found the author of this code, she might break every one of his fingers for the fact that a, he wrote something so nuisance based that threatened the kind of damage his did, and b, because he didn’t vary the instructions.

She did a global change, and pushed it forward. Then one by one, the red lights on the servers began to turn blue—and finally, green. Pushing out of the chair, she retrieved the thumb drive from inside the tampon wrapper and carefully laid aside the foam wrap around it, then she moved to the first row of server cages, worked the lock open and plugged the thumb drive in.

It went green as soon as she connected it.

Returning to her laptop, she skimmed the code. Some hackers left little messages in their changes in order to take credit for their work, but since she needed to be leave shortly, she might not have time to find it so she saved the code into a partition and buried it on her laptop’s hard drive before disconnecting it and sliding it back into the messenger bag.

Every server was running green lights, and the lightbridges didn’t error out when she ran the systems check. She’d barely had time to palm the thumb drive when the door opened again, and the sweaty little Baskin arrived. “You fixed it.”

“Yes, sir,” she told him as diplomatically as possible, making a point of glancing around the desk next to her messenger bag as if she might have forgotten something.

“Good, I have another system I need you to check and you’re the only engineer here.”

That wasn’t a good idea. “I’m…”

“I don’t care. Let’s go.” Behind him a pair of security guards—no, mercenaries. Those were definitely not security guards. The pair looked at her with dead expressions and cold eyes.

“Now, Ms. Roehmer,” Baskin told her taking her messenger bag from her hand and passing it to one of the guards before he gripped her elbow again and dragged her forward. “I don’t have all day.”

She pulled away at the last second to grab her coffee cup and then held it to her chest as if they might try to take it. The man just gave her an impatient glare and walked her right out of the server room with the thumb drive still nestled in her palm.

“Mr. Baskin,” she began but he sliced a hand through the air.

“No arguments, Roehmer. You don’t have the security clearance for where we’re going, but you were never here do you understand?”

Oh, she understood.

Her gaze flicked uncertainty toward the mercs crowding behind her. The sweaty little fellow snarling at her was a nuisance. Those two were a threat. And she didn’t want them at her back. But she completely understood. Something had gone wrong and he was bringing her in to fix it.

And then probably killing her after.

She understood entirely.

Making a show of swallowing, she lifted her coffee cup and said as they hustled her down the hallway. “I don’t suppose I can stop in the bathroom—I have a nervous bowel.” Naomi was just very uncomfortable with the men crowding into her space, and she paled under the attention.

Amusingly enough, one of the mercs who’d been right on her ass took a step back and Baskin scowled, slowing his mad rushing of her down the hall in front of a door marked clearly  _Men_. “Be fast about it,” he ordered, then motioned to the guy who’d actually looked more disturbed by her nervous bowel than she was, to follow her. “Protocol, you understand.” Not that Baskin was apologizing for it.

“Of course,” she stuttered, and then shoved the coffee cup at him before rushing in the bathroom like she couldn’t hold it.

Maybe the toady little man would take a drink. He seemed like the type.

That would almost be worth it.

Inside, she took her time, and released a couple of very low, groaning noises before dropping the thumbdrive into the toilet with a plop. Then she waited another beat—and pee’d while she was in there because, why not?

After, she flushed the toilet and made her way over to the sink. The merc looked anywhere but at her, and she cast him a small smile. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“Don’t worry about,” the merc said, giving her if not a friendly smile, at least a polite one. “Baskin’s a dick.”

Hands washed, she said, “I just came in to do some paperwork. I’m really not sure what all the fuss is about.”

“Look,” he said, his voice dropping a note and he moved closer. “Just smile, and nod, and when he says you were never here—you were never here. Okay?”

She batted her eyelashes at him, and then nodded. “All right…I’d introduce myself—but I wasn’t here.”

“Atta girl,” he winked, then cupped her elbow rather than gripped it and guided her to the door.

Then Baskin shoved her coffee cup at her again.

And it was lighter.

Natasha allowed Naomi to smile a little, even if she had to make it look like gratitude.

It wouldn’t be long until Baskin had a nervous bowel of his own.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Then again, it couldn’t come soon enough because they were arriving at another set of elevators and the sign next to them said Access Restricted.

The one below it read Hazardous Materials Area _._

Well…she’d wanted a closer look at what Roxxon was doing.

Making herself smaller took a little effort, but she shrank into herself, hunching her shoulders slightly and stealing a glance at the bathroom merc. He just gave her a brief encouraging nod and she eased toward him. Nothing obvious, just a sway in his direction.

He responded in kind.

Natasha nodded internally.

She could use that.

Then the elevator rose, and she braced herself for what happened when the doors opened.


	25. Hazardous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat discovers what's on the other side of the doors...and a whole new set of problems.

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

**Hazardous**

**Natasha**

 

 

A klaxon bleated through the air, and red lights cycled on the wall as the elevator doors opened into the cavernous space. The elevator emptied onto a network of metal catwalks overlooking massive tanks. Naomi did her best to not look down, but Natasha absorbed the organized chaos with a practiced eye. There were workers in hazmat gear racing on the floor below, making manual adjustments to the sealed vats. Steam poured out of the side of one, venting toward a massive fan that sucked the steam away to…somewhere.

There was an unsettling amount of déjà vu blanketing her. Baskin didn’t waste time saying anything to her, he just hurried across the catwalk to a mezzanine where two other technicians argued with each other, shouting to be heard over the klaxons despite the man in the dark blue uniform standing behind them, arms folded. Mindful of her heels against the mesh, she moved on the balls of her feet. A faint vibration against her ear—comms were back on.

With her pair of merc babysitters, she followed Baskin because while this wasn’t part of her original plan—she wanted to know what the hell they were doing.

“You said they could handle this,” the man in the blue uniform bellowed as Baskin reached him. He turned slightly, giving Natasha a solid look at his profile—and the military insignia on his chest.

General.

U.S. Air Force.

Oh, the day was going from bad to worse.

“I brought the woman that fixed the first part of the problem,” Baskin said with a wave toward her. “Let’s go—we don’t have much time.”

Avoiding a direct look at the general, she kept her chin down and her shoulders vaguely hunched and cupped a hand over her ear as if to block out the sound, but pressed the earring to turn her comm receiver on. Trusting it would send the acknowledgement she glanced at the terminals Baskin motioned to impatiently.

“Fix these.”

“To do what?” She glanced from the error codes dancing up the screen to him. It was all well and good to point her at the equipment, but like hitting a target in the dark without any information on their location, her chances for success were greatly limited.

Not to mention the alarm klaxon had begun to reverberate through her. It wasn’t the most ideal of circumstances to work out a puzzle, but she’d survived worst. At least on this level, there were windows on a 360, which meant James could get eyes on her, even if she couldn’t hear him on her comms over the damn noise.

“They control the containment on these tanks. We need them back online.” Baskin yelled right in her ear as if she were to dim to hear him or maybe his voice to weak to carry. Of course that meant James definitely heard him.

She glanced from the screen to the tanks. More of them were steaming.

“If they reach 32 degrees Fahrenheit, containment seals are going to snap. The material begins to liquidize.”

The material.

The bioorganic material.

What had Tony said about being reckless?

“You have five minutes to get this shit show under control,” the general added, close enough she could smell the overabundance of his aftershave. Thankfully he wasn’t staring at her face. “Or I’m calling in the Avengers.”

The pulse beep in her ear shifted.

-. .- -- / --- -. / - .... . / .-- .- -.-- .-.-.-

It repeated.

_The team is on the way._

She nodded her head.

“So can you do it?” The general demanded and she pushed away from he and Baskin and settled in front of the terminal.

One of the technicians snapped, “We can’t bring them back up. They lost connect with the lightbridge and then got hung when it came back on.”

Bending sideways, Nat looked underneath, found the main power switch and flipped it off. All the monitors went blank. She counted to ten in her head, but a hand landed on her shoulder to jerk her around and she caught two of the fingers and bent them backward.

Baskin yelped.

“You want me to fix this? Stop. Touching. Me.” Naomi added a little punctuation by stressing the last three words with a tad more force on the fingers. She released him when she hit ten in her head, then bent to turn the power back on.

The boot screens were slow—when had they built these things, 1995? She didn’t tap her foot or her fingers as she waited for the screens to resolve from the slop blink of the cursor. When the company’s logo appeared, that was a good sign.

Meanwhile, a fourth tank had begun to steam.

On the floor, two of the men in hazmat suits began to retreat.

That was really not good.

. .- -- / --- -. / - .... . / .-- .- -.-- .-.-.-

 

_Paint my target._

She shook her head. They couldn’t afford to take out any of them with the general right there. Not if she could pull this off. The first screen opened to the command terminal and she did a swift search for basic command structure. Identifying the cooling systems, and the four primary commands associated with them, she ordered a manual temperature drop.

The klaxon changed, and there was an explosion of metal shearing so intense it blotted out the alarm. Everyone seemed to move into slow motion as the tank ripped itself apart and black ooze collapsed out of it like some kind roiling metallic pool.

“Fuck me,” the bathroom merc swore.

The general hit a button the desk. “Clear the floor,” he yelled into it, but she wasn’t sure anyone heard him over their own panic. Like in Tony’s lab, the material seemed to move of its own accord. It wasn’t quite crawling so much as oozing its way from the tank and spreading across the floor—looking? Spilling? Was it really alive?

When it changed directions abruptly, she had her answer.

“Sir, we need to go,” the second merc was telling Baskin. One of the two technicians on the mezzanine level with them bolted. He just dropped his shit and ran. Nat glanced back at the screen. Temperatures on the other tanks was dropping, but the first one, the one emptying its contents had redlined first. The nitrogen tanks attached to it, however, were still intact.

“Stark,” the general behind her said. “You and your team are to deploy to Louisiana. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

The sludge had reached one of the workers who hadn’t had a direct path away from the slick, oily substance. The man retreated looking wildly for somewhere to go and his reaction was either blind panic or the sure knowledge his hazmat suit wouldn’t help. Nat got into the system for the nitrogen tanks attached to the failed unit.

“This is Glenn Talbot, who the hell else would it be?”

Talbot.

She filed the name away and began issuing the commands to vent the liquid nitrogen to the floor. She just needed the technician to move…there, he had retreated to the last clear space and clambered up onto one of the edges of the other tanks to get his feet off the floor.

Hitting enter, she winced at the high pitched scream the piping made as the valve on the vacuum tube containing the liquid nitrogen twisted open. She did a mental count to five as it splashed the oozing, oily slick and even when the sludge tried to retreat from it, it was too late. It splattered across the black transforming and freezing it instantly.

“Stand by Stark…” The general said as he lowered the phone and covered the speaker with his hand. “What did you do?”

Nat half stood from the seat, and stared down at the sludge as all of it hardened, to utter stillness but the transformation took place over seconds, giving the sludge time to arch upwards as though tendrils reached up to escape before they too, hardened.

Then all of it was one solid mass.

“I vented the liquid nitrogen—” Only years of discipline and practice kept Naomi’s accent firmly in place.

Hitting a second command, she closed the valve. Somewhere, the alarm klaxon sputtered off as the temperatures on the other tanks dropped below threatening levels.

“And now I’ve closed it. So the thing I didn’t see that didn’t happen is contained.”

The general snorted, then said, “Stand down Stark—we have it under control.”

Below, the technician, who’d climbed a tank for safety, worked his way around—seeming loath to step down onto the frozen sludge.

She didn’t blame him.

“When I want your opinion, Mr. Stark, I’ll be sure to submit myself to a 72 hour psych hold first. Stand down. The Avengers are not required.” Then he disconnected the phone. “Clean this up Baskin, I want a full report on my desk of everything that went wrong and how you plan to correct it.”

“You are aware, _General_ , that I don’t work for you.” Baskin’s condescension resurged in the wake of the diminishing emergency. “This is a corporate matter. We’ll take care of it.”

Nat didn’t look up from the screen, but used the darkened one to her right to keep an eye on the four men behind her. Her ears were still ringing, but she had all the systems green lit except for the containment unit that had already been ruptured. Below, there were men in even heavier duty gear moving toward the frozen solid sludge. Would it stay that way? Or had she just suspended it in cryo?

And had it felt pain? The way it rippled and moved could be interpreted as pain? It definitely had directionality down; it had been stalking the guy in the hazmat suit.

Did every large tank in this facility have more of that stuff?

“See that you do.” The general paused, and he notably didn’t look at her. “Clean it all up.” Then the general was striding away. The elevator doors opened, and then closed.

Baskin gripped her chair and she was ready for the yank as he pulled it backwards, and stood as if he’d done it just to assist her. Pivoting, she glanced at him. “I take it I’m done with what I didn’t see or hear or do?”

“Take care of her,” he instructed, his face pale and sweaty. He definitely didn’t look well. Then he walked away leaving her with merc one and merc two. The second man reached for her arm, but it was bathroom merc who grabbed her instead.

“Natalia?” the soft whisper of James’ voice almost made her smile. She understood the question. He had line of sight on both of these guys, but that would still leave her exposed here and needing to escape across a lot of open ground. Trusting his skills wasn’t a problem. As much intelligence as she’d gathered, she wasn’t compromised yet. Naomi was.

She shook her head in answer.

“Bozhe moi,” he muttered against her ear. “Hurry.”

She let the pair guide her into the elevator. Merc number two still had her messenger bag and she managed to bring her coffee. The merc took it out of her hand and sniffed it, then smirked as he drained the cup.

Some men just had to try and prove their superiority in all things—even the dregs of ice-cold coffee. When he done, he crumpled the cup. “You didn’t seem like you planned on finishing it.”

“Nervous bowel,” she reminded him, being flip despite the quiver in her voice. Naomi was very nervous, and she was just an IT girl. “I mean I came in to do some paperwork and a couple of server backups. And who knew it would be a day for such craziness…”

The elevator descended.

“Not that there was anything to see or do.” She cast a quick hopeful smile at the bathroom merc.

His expression tightened and his gaze cut away. Guilt was such a bitch in his line of work. He should probably think about doing something else. Soon, if he wanted a change of occupation. The elevator opened to the computer server level and the pair escorted her down the hall. The lack of cameras down here made it glaringly obvious. They kept her on course for the main building, and when they stepped into the elevator to go up to sub basement one, she had to wonder if she’d read the situation incorrectly.

But then she’d catch the bathroom merc sliding her a sideways look and she sighed internally. Naomi had begun to shake. Reaction setting in. Manufacturing tears wasn’t hard, but she needed her vision unimpaired.

On sub basement one, they turned from where the other elevators were located and the guy with her messenger bag opened another set of doors. “Just cooperate,” bathroom merc murmured. “We’ll make it painless…I promise.”

“Just shut up and get in here. We’ve got things to do.” He was adding a suppressor to his gun.

“Really? You couldn’t just do it without telling her?” Bathroom merc complained. “The room is soundproof. One shot and she wouldn’t have felt anything, so instead you scare her.”

That was almost sweet. He’d been upset at the danger of “frightening” her versus the fact the guy was going to actually “kill” her.

He tightened his grip on her arm as if she might flee. “Soundproof?” she verified, scanning the interior of the room. There were some questionable stains in a couple of places. Likely the perfect room for “cleaning” up messes like employees knowing things they shouldn’t.

“Yeah sweetheart…” The first merc made a face as he lifted the gun. He’d gone very pale under his tan, and sweat slicked his hairline. “What the hell?”

“You all right?” Bathroom merc frowned.

“No, I’m afraid he’s not,” Natasha told him, and twisted free of his grip. One foot slammed down atop his and she ground the heel in even as she cut an elbow into his junk and then twisted, pulling him in front of her and using him as a body shield as the first guy fired wildly. Two bullets plowed into the bathroom merc and she shoved him at the remaining guy. Leaping right over him, she caught his wrist and arm in a lock, and pushed the gun upward as he fired several times.

“Sorry—so not shooting me.” She informed him, pulling away and twisting so she could wrap herself around him, and then she got her legs up ad over, and twist.

The crunch of his neck had him dropping as she landed on her heels, his gun in hand. She inspected it. Then stripped the weapon down and put it and discarded the pieces. No sense in leaving live fire around. Then she picked up the messenger bag, and removed a compact to check her appearance.

A radio sounded below. Baskin’s labored voice came over the radio. “Tell me she’s—what did she do to me?”

Oh, he sounded miserable.

Lifting the radio, she depressed the button. “I’m afraid you ingested an experimental compound, Mr. Baskin. I’d get to a hospital before your insides start bleeding on your outsides—and next time you’re holding someone’s coffee…don’t drink it.” She stripped the radio and left it as well before tucking everything away and letting herself out of their silent room. On steady feet she crossed to the elevators and headed to the lobby.

Rodney glanced up as she walked out, a little breathless and flushed.

“Everything fixed, Ms. Roehmer?” His genial smile was so out of place here. Might be a good time for him to find a new job.

“Thankfully. Now, I’m getting out of here before they change their minds.”

He laughed and waved her on. “Have a great weekend.”

“You too!”

And despite the near catastrophe in a building not a hundred yards away, he seemed to be utterly unaware of it. Talk about criminal negligence.

“I’m on my way,” she murmured as she stepped out of the building on her way to the car shedding Naomi with every step. Fuck them all if they picked up her transmission now. A stolen glance at the other building revealed nothing out of order. There was a helicopter departing—probably the general’s. And a single vehicle ripped out of the other lot, tearing up the road. “You know…” she said as she let herself into the borrowed car. “I’m starving.”

“Is that so?” His tone was so dry. He was either going to yell at her or just give her a cold glower when she picked him up.

Her lips quirked as she started the engine and glanced down at herself. There was a drop of blood on the hem of her shirt, and easily hidden when she tucked it back in. Her nail color was a little chipped. Nothing to be done about that.

“Do you like gumbo?” she asked before tapping the bracelet twice, deactivating it.

“Can’t recall having it,” he replied, but there was a hint of a smile in his words. He couldn’t stay mad at her for long. She hadn’t gotten shot this time. And she’d gotten all kinds of intelligence and kept a disaster from breaking out in the building. In most ways, it was an excellent day.

The guards were as pleasant on her way out as they had been on her way in. Even Bob—poor Bob. Naomi wasn’t going to be available for that call. Hopefully he wasn’t too disappointed. Amazingly, it had been just under three hours, and when she slowed at the curve of the road, out of sight of the facility, she smiled at James as he tossed his bag into the backseat before sliding into the passenger side.

“ _Privet lyubovnik_ ,” she said with a grin.

A hint of a smile cracked through his cool exterior, and he swept his gaze over her. Sweat slicked his hair and from the musky scent, soaked his clothes. The humidity here really was bad. “Don’t freak out?”

“Didn’t really have time to explain,” she said by way of apology. “How far out were…” before she could even finish the question, Iron Man landed on the road in front of her and his helmet lifted as he glared at her. “Apparently not far.”

“Didn’t really have time to explain, doll.” He smirked as the armor around Tony retracted and he stalked over to climb in the backseat of the car.

“So—the part about reckless, Red? You forget what that word means?”

“Hi Tony, good to see you, too. Hungry? I was just asking James if he was interested in gumbo.”

The sullen silence behind her was far from amused. Finally he said, “You’re lucky I’m not Rogers.”

Glancing at him in the rearview mirror, she said, “I don’t know—I think you’d look good in blue tights.”

James’ lips twitched, and he turned his head to look out the window as she continued out to the highway. Yes, he was cross with her but more because she’d been so out of reach, and not for her choices. Exactly. They would be fine.

Tony on the other hand…

“You let us know you’re going in,” he said, leaning forward so his head was between the seats so he could glare at her. “Then you go offline, no word, no signals— _nothing—_ by the time you come back on, there are alarms, yelling and _Talbot_.”

“Yes,” she said agreeably, because that was pretty much what happened. “The worm is installed and should be data mining away for you. They’ve got more of that bioorganic mess in there—in what must be a dozen highly pressurized tanks being cooled by liquid nitrogen.”

With a frown, James focused on her and his gaze swept over her again.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I had to fix technical issues, someone sabotaged their whole system—” It took her about ten minutes to walk them through the whole series of events. The timing, she had to admit, was too convenient. Someone sabotaged the facility the same day she walked into it? The same day Glenn Talbot, the U.S. Air Force general who had apparently been appointed as a new liaison to the committee among other things was on site? The self-same general had also sent the team to Alaska where Steve had been exposed to their dangerous substance.

Coincidence didn’t come with such a stretchy waist.

Slumping against the backseat, Tony frowned. There were still shadows under his eyes, but they weren’t quite as bad as they’d been when she’d seen him the morning before.

James rested his left hand against her thigh. A simple touch. All was forgiven or at least accepted. Some things they just couldn’t change.

“What I want to know is how deep Talbot is in on this?”

“I’d say this is at least a shadow military operation,” she told him. The parallels to some of her work at SHIELD couldn’t be ignored. Hell, the parallels to some of the installations she’d seen while in the Red Room and KGB came to mind, too. “Granted, generals tend to believe they are in charge, but he was barking orders and he expected them to be followed. Baskin wasn’t thrilled with him being there, and he was definitely afraid of him. I don’t think Baskin is military at all, he’s just a mid-level functionary. He knows enough to be dangerous—and he has no problems with ordering people killed.”

“So is it the whole company or specific areas of it? Roxxon’s energy contracts haven’t advanced that far through the Senate sub-committees. They haven’t shown enough progress.” Tony tapped a finger against his jaw. “And who sabotaged them? Is there another player we don’t know about?”

“If there is, I’ll find them. You concentrate on finding a reagent to neutralize that stuff. Hopefully whatever is in their computers will help.” She caught James’ gaze and he raised his brows. They were going to find the saboteur? She nodded once. He tapped a message against her leg—Lover boy?

A shrug, but not a denial. She didn’t want to think it was him, and it may just be one of his contacts, but he was their best lead. A conversation with him would get them at least closer than they were now.

“You sure you’re all right Red?”

“I’m fine Tony,” she assured him. “It was fun.” Making light of it would drive Steve to distraction, but it would put Tony at ease. James would just wait until they were alone to ask her more direct questions. “Got what we needed, and I got to save the day and they didn’t question my cover once. I’m better than fine. I’m excellent.”

The smirk on James’ face held an element of pride and she winked at him before returning her attention to the road.

Tony drummed his hands against his thighs. “You mentioned food?”

“I mentioned gumbo,” she told him, and didn’t snicker at his disgruntled expression.

“No chance at cheeseburgers?”

“When I have access to all of the French Quarter and Cajun cuisine?” She scoffed.

“I’ll buy,” Tony offered like it would change her mind and she chuckled.

“Tell you what, I’ll hit a drive through for you, and then you can eat something before you head back.”

“You’re not heading back now?”

She shook her head. “Still have some things to do here.”

He slid a look from her to James and then back. “Some things or some one to do?”

Without missing a beat, she smiled, “I’ve done that a few times, and trust me when I say it’s worth the repeat experience.”

Tony clutched his chest and leaned back in the seat. “You’re killing me Red.”

“Then stop poking me.”

“Fine,” he huffed a sigh. “You’re really sure you’re okay? I was worried.”

The quiet admission earned her forgiveness for his digging. “Always,” she told him, catching his gaze in the rearview mirror. “Spy whammy intact.”

He nodded. “Okay—when should I send the plane for you two?”

“A couple of days yet.” They still had a trafficking ring to break and a conversation with Lover boy that needed to happen.

Another nod, and he went quiet when she pulled through the Burger King, and ordered food for both he and James. She took a hard pass. The food wasn’t to her taste, but Tony loved their cheeseburgers and she remembered his order easily. After passing back the food, she headed them toward the safe house. Tony didn’t need to know where all of them were, but right now she just wanted to change into something more comfortable and take the time to unpack everything she’d learned before digging down on the code.

Back at the house, she pulled the pins out of her hair to free it as she slid out of the car. A layer of tired spread through her—crashing from the adrenaline of the day and she wanted some peace and quiet to just rest her brain. She glanced at James and raised a brow. He had his bag and hers in hand along with his food. With a glance at Tony, then a nod to her, he headed into the house leaving her and Tony alone.

“I guess this is where you send me on my way?” Tony asked drily.

“We’ve both got things to do.” Leaning against the car, she combed her fingers through her hair. “Thank you for being worried and for coming.”

“Nearly got called in anyway,” he told her with a wry smile. “Rogers wasn’t thrilled when Talbot had us turning back. You should call him.”

“I will, I’m sure James already has.” No doubt existed within her.

Tony sighed, then stepped forward to take her hand and he tapped the bracelet. “Thank you for activating this.”

“I told you I would, however,” she added the caveat slowly, focusing on him. “It doesn’t give you carte blanche to try and crash in and save me if I don’t need saving.”

“They tried to kill you.”

“Operative word—tried. I was fine Tony. It was unexpected, but I got a good look on the inside, at their systems. Your worm is in place. They still have no idea who I was or what I was doing there.”

“You left bodies behind,” he reminded her.

She shrugged. “They know they had a saboteur. By the time they start looking for me, the only people who got a good look are going to be too embarrassed to admit it or too dead to say anything.”

“That Baskin fellow?”

With a slow smile, she just stared at him.

“Fine, I’ll butt out.” He held up his hands. “I should get back anyway, Pete’s gonna be working on some stuff in the lab and I had Clint come over to keep an eye on him when I had to leave.”

She let her smile fade. “I thought Clint was confined to the Compound.”

“Well it turns out I have some pull and since part of his house arrest is working with the Avengers, I got it extended to the Tower—so surprise. You can see your bestie again.” He looked so tickled with himself, she chuckled. “It’s good to have him there, anyway. He’s got a good eye for details.”

“Yes, he does.” Then she leaned forward and brushed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Tony.”

He squeezed her hand. “Thank you, Red. No more reckless stunts.”

“No promises.”

“God, don’t I know it. You’re worse than me,” he said with an exaggerated sigh before he let her hand go and backed up a step.

“Impossible. No one is worse than you.”

“And yet, unimaginably, you manage to give me a run for my money.” He activated his armor. “Two days—I’ll expect to be sending a plane for you or to have heard that you’re still breathing.”

“Goodbye Tony,” she murmured at his wagging finger, and then waited as he soared upward.

Pushing off the car, she headed inside tapping the bracelet to deactivate it again. The cool air conditioning chilled the layer of dampness the humidity left behind.

“Here,” James said as he held out his phone, and she smiled at him as she took it and the dog tags he pressed into her free hand. He’d kept them safe for her while she was inside.

“I’m fine,” she told Steve, and there was a lengthy sigh—just a deep release of breath.

“Good,” he said. “Everything went according to plan?” The careful phrasing alerted her to the fact he wasn’t alone.

“Not exactly, but close enough for government work,” she slipped off the heels and wiggled her toes against the cool wood floors, then pulled the chain over her neck. “Everything okay with you?” And this was why she didn’t call. The distance mattered, and talking to them just made her want to close the distance, but they couldn’t yet.

“Not bad—Wanda’s here, and it’s good to see her.” His voice shifted, and the background noise drifted away. “We were called out, but then—everything magically resolved itself, so we’re on our way back. Sam wants me to grab some dinner with him tonight.”

“That sounds like fun.” She missed Sam and Wanda. In a way, she even missed Vision. “Are you guys taking Wanda, too? Or is she going to hang out with Clint?” Well, Clint was at the Tower, so maybe not. Though they could introduce Wanda to Peter, they weren’t the same age, but close.

“No, she and Vision have plans this evening.” Steve’s tone suggested he wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Well good, they probably have a few issues to sort out.” Behind her James moved around the kitchen, but it was the sound of the kettle turning off that alerted her to the fact he was making tea. When he caught her looking, he just gave her a small smile and returned to his task.

“Wish I was there,” Steve said abruptly.

“You may not believe me, but me too,” she told him.

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” He sounded a little offended.

“Because I’m not a sap.” That earned her a smirk from James and a scoff from Steve, and she grinned for real. “Need a couple more days. Still have to finish the job here.”

“And you’ll fill me in on all the other details about today when you get back?” There it was. She frowned at James and he didn’t shy away in the slightest as he slid the teacup across to her.

“Would you like the briefing written or oral?”

“However you want to give it to me,” Steve said, and if it had been anyone but Steve, she might have thought he was being suggestive. Then he added, “I’m sure you know what I’ll need.”

That was definitely suggestive.

She pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment and then said, “I thought I did—but I think someone just changed the game. Well played.”

“Got to keep you on your toes…” The unspoken Romanoff dangled off the end.

“You do a good job of that Rogers—have fun at dinner tonight. We’ll see you soon and I’m sure James will keep you fully apprised of everything we’re doing.”

“He was my friend first,” he whispered in James’ defense and she laughed.

“Touché.”

“Be careful.”

“You too.”

Then the call ended, and she eyed James. “So that’s how we’re playing this? You tell Steve everything?”

He shrugged. “I’d want to know. So he needed to know, too.”

She pursed her lips, uncertain of how to process that. Cradling the teacup, she took a sip. Not telling Steve the specific details and downplaying the issue had been more about protecting him than lying to him. But—James was right. If he or Steve were in the same situation, she’d want to know, too. It wasn’t a secret, Tony had been aware of the mission because he’d asked her to do it. Old habits.

_Sounds like a hard way to live._

_It’s a good way not to die though._

Bad habits. Then blew out a breath as she set the cup down. “Okay.”

Eyebrows raised, he studied her. “Just okay?”

“You expected me to be more disagreeable?” Somehow, she doubted it.

“The thought crossed my mind.” He leaned on the counter, still studying her unblinking.

“Well I’m trying,” she informed him. “I’m not used to answering to anyone that isn’t a handler.” She never wanted a handler again. No one was pulling her strings. Not anymore.

The corner of his mouth tilted. “Same.” His tone suggested absolute agreement with her sentiment.

“You answered to Steve before,” she pointed out. Their friendship had a foundation in normalcy.

James snorted. “Not quite. More the other way around…but I’d still want him to tell me if you weren’t safe. I’d want to know if you needed me.”

Reaching across the counter, she brushed his hand and he grasped her fingers. “I’m trying.”

“I know.” He gave her fingers a squeeze. “Everything all right with Stark?”

“He’s on his way back.” She really didn’t want to fight about the Tony thing.

“Okay,” he said with a slow nod. And that was it. At her raised eyebrows, the corners of his lips curved upwards in a grin. “I’m trying, too.”

Then she laughed. “We’re terrible at this.”

“Not true,” he argued. “We pulled off an impossible mission.”

“And I didn’t get shot,” she agreed, and smiled when he squeezed her hand again. “And you might have been frustrated out there, but having you there was…comforting.”

“So what’s next?”

She sniffed him. “A shower, I think. You can’t sneak up on anyone smelling that way—” The statement hung out there as he suddenly circled the counter and hoisted her laughing over his shoulder, then marched them both toward the bedroom and the shower.

An hour later, she sprawled on the bed spent and relaxed. The adrenaline crash coupled with a couple of orgasms was more than enough to leave her wanting to sleep, but they couldn’t do that yet.

James rested on his side, head propped on his right hand as he spread his left hand against her abdomen, tracing the scar there. “Do you think your friend betrayed you?”

“I don’t know what to think about him,” she murmured, her eyes half-closed. She wouldn’t label Lover boy a _friend_ precisely, but they had history. “I have no reason to believe he sold me out. But I also have no reason to think he wouldn’t take advantage of an opportunity if he found it in what I was doing. That said…” she wound it back to the beginning. “I don’t believe he would jeopardize me without having a damn good reason.”

“You just don’t know what the reason is.”

“I’m not going to pretend we’re so tight I could swear he would never betray me,” she said, opening her eyes to meet his questioning gaze. “We’re going to have to question him…but I don’t want to hurt him unnecessarily.”

If she asked, and he lied to her…

“You will pull apart the code first.” It wasn’t a question. She’d already explained about hacker signatures.

“Yes.”

“Natalia—I can deal with Lover boy for you if you wish.” It was a kind offer, he wanted to relieve her of the responsibility. But she wouldn’t use James as a killer.

“I won’t use you as a weapon,” she told him, stretching her hand up to caress his cheek.

“I never thought you would,” he assured her. “Sometimes, it is easier to confront an issue if you do not have an emotional attachment.”

Attached.

There was that word again, and she closed her eyes this time, every inch of her aware of his presence next to her. Aware of Steve’s dog tags around her neck. Aware of the fact Steve was in New York or at least on his way back there, and she rather wished they were there too, or he was here.

But if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

“I’m not attached to Lover boy,” she said after a long breath. “That doesn’t mean I am not fond of him. We have history…” But if he betrayed her—if he jeopardized her? Fine. She would live with it. She’d survived. But he could have endangered so many others and that was not something she could easily overlook. “Whoever hacked those computers put all the people in that facility in danger. They put everyone who could have come into contact with it in danger.”

People like Bob at the gate and Rodney at the security desk.

“And you…”

“I don’t care about me.” The minute the words slipped out, she regretted them because James’ hand tightened against her stomach.

Before she could take it back, however, he said, “I _do_. You will take greater care _kotyonok_ , because you are not the only one attached.” Cold precision sliced every word and when she stared into his eyes, they were flat and unyielding. “I will never cage you. I will never shackle you. But I will _never_ let you use yourself carelessly either. Do you understand, doll? If you won’t take care of you, _we_ will.”

Half of that was the Soldier, and the other half had the distinct Brooklyn intonations. “James…”

“No,” he replied unflinchingly. “We’re all trying. We’re all adapting. But you don’t get to be careless. We care. _I_ care. So if you cannot care for you, then can you care for us?”

“Of course I care about both of you,” she said. “And I don’t mean I don’t—”

“Yes you did.” He wouldn’t let her walk it back. Nor would he back down. “That is unacceptable. You would die for us…that’s what you said.”

Tensing, she nodded even though she’d hoped he’d actually been asleep when she confessed to Steve how dangerous the pair of them was to her. “Yes,” she admitted, refusing to shy away from it if he was going to call her on the carpet.

“Do you think either of us would do any less?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I know you would.” They’d made that very clear—when they’d covered her after the explosion in Azzano, allowed themselves to be captured, which for James had to have been a difficult task—so many moments. “That’s why I didn’t want Steve here.” Because he would have charged in there; he wouldn’t have held back. Steve didn’t do subtle. After his earlier exposure to the substance, she wanted to avoid any repeat experiences.

“Natalia, you will do anything to keep us safe. Take any risk. You do it for your team—you did it for Tony. I _saw_ the damage you put yourself through to expose Ross. You did that for all of us.” He sighed. “Your loyalty runs deeper than anyone I know expect maybe Steve. His loyalty runs as deep…and I hope to show that mine does, too. No matter what our past says.”

“James…”

“No, I’m talking.” The command silenced her. “I have a lot to prove. I shot you—twice. I couldn’t stop them from putting you in that chair. If I pulled you back at all, then I am grateful. Steve has kept you alive. I need to be the guy who does that too. And you have to let us. You want to protect us, but you have to let us protect you.”

He finally huffed out a breath and added, “I am suddenly developing a deeper sympathy for Barton.”

She bit her lip, then started laughing. “I don’t know whether to be offended or amused.”

Eyes flashing, he narrowed the distance and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I just found you again…I don’t want to lose you.”

And what little argument she had left dissolved, and she wrapped her arms around him and rested against him. “I don’t want to be lost,” she admitted. She’d been lost before—and she was still excavating pieces of herself.

“Good,” he told her, and there was a smugness there. The heavy emotion blanketing them eased. He’d accepted her at her word.

“Don’t get cocky,” she reminded him, and he chuckled.

“Hard not to when the most beautiful woman in the world can’t get enough of me.” There was that smugness again. These pieces of Bucky Barnes entertained her, especially when he meant every word.

“You do know, even naked, I can still kick your ass, right?” Empty threat or not, it sounded good.

“Hmm,” he exhaled, rubbed his hands along her back as he rolled over and pulled her across him like his favorite blanket. “I know. That’s the best part…now that we’ve settled all of that. What’s next?”

Damn.

They really did need to get back to work.

Lifting her head, she looked down at him. “How do you feel about kicking in some doors?”

“Together?”

She grinned and dipped her head to whisper against his lips. “Yes.”

“Then I can definitely be persuaded.” He spread his hand against her ass and squeezed it. “What do you have in mind?”

“Persuasion or door kicking?”

“Lady’s choice…”

She chuckled. “Food…”

“There are burgers.”

“I want real food.”

“Burgers are real food.” He argued.

Well, never let it be said she couldn’t play with fire. “It’s like being in bed with Stark.”

In two seconds she was flat on her back, and he was tickling her. The laughter chased away the last of the shadows—and her hunger.

For now.


	26. Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky deal with different ambushes

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

**Shots**

**Steve**

 

 

“Is everything all right?” Wanda asked and Steve had to suppress a startled flinch. More because he hadn’t heard her approach than the fact she was right there as he disconnected the call and turned around. She’d been up near the front of the quinjet with Vision. But a glance revealed Sam had taken her place.

“It’s fine,” he told her, slipping the phone into a pocket inside his suit.

“You seemed very worried before,” she commented carefully, folding her arms and leaning against the side as though she intended to pursue the conversation. Steve forced away a frown. If he grew too awkward it would just make her more suspicious.

Besides, she’d been home less than a day, and seemed unsettled herself. “Not fond of getting the call out, only to have us turn back less than halfway there because it was a _false_ alarm.” It hadn’t been. In his bones, he knew this. Tony more or less confirmed it when he said they’d talk later. The call had everything to do with… he shook off that thought. “There’s a lot that’s been going on. How are _you_ doing?”

They’d spoken, but only in the most general of terms. She’d spent most of her time in her room, or with Clint at least until Clint had left for the Tower. “It’s—I am not sure how it is,” Wanda admitted.

The uniform she’d adopted over the course of her first year with the Avengers was not in evidence. Instead, she wore dark leggings, a matching blouse and a familiar red jacket. Her usual jewelry missing, and even her hair pulled up and away from her face. It made her seem both more mature, and painfully young in the same breath.

“It took me a few days to adjust to being back, too.” He folded his arms, mirroring her pose and leaning against the wall. “Germany was only a few weeks ago, but…”

“It feels like years,” Wanda finished for him. “It does—you seem so different from when I last saw you in Wakanda and it hasn’t been three weeks?”

He did?

“Every one seems different—except Sam, he’s the same and Vis.” She stole a glance over her shoulder, but neither Vision nor Sam were focusing on them. Instead, Sam was explaining something—probably answering a question Vision asked. “They are as I remember them. But Stark—he seems more settled, at ease, and focused. Maybe even less uncomfortable around me? Though admittedly, I haven’t spent much time with him. Clint—even with his injuries, he’s more grounded and purposeful…though that might not be the word. But you…Steve you’re very different. And I can’t put my finger on why. It’s… what happened?”

He shook his head slowly. “Hard to be the same guy,” he told her as honestly as he could. “Never thought I’d be the guy who fought my friends. Never thought I’d have Buck back—wanted and hoped for, but didn’t think I’d ever succeed.” Weirdly, he hadn’t realized how true that was. How on some level he’d accepted his efforts would be doomed to disappointment. Maybe because even after finding out he was alive, and all that had been done to him—Steve shook his head again. “We have to do better this time. All of us.”

“Will the Accords let us?” Her unease about the Accords and the committee was not unfounded.

“Yes,” he assured her. “We’re in a better place now—the team and we’re on the same page about them. The committee’s also willing to adopt changes…”

“Because of what Natasha did?” The question startled him. They hadn’t discussed Natasha… “Vision told me,” Wanda added quietly.

Steve looked past her to Vision, then back. “What did he tell you exactly?”

“That she turned herself over to Ross—Ross wanted to use her to kill you and Tony…and maybe even members of the committee. That somehow, a recording of all of this, was turned in to the committee, and that Ross was removed both from the Accords committee and his position as Secretary. But no one has seen Natasha since.”

“More or less,” he told her. “Without her, we’d still be negotiating house arrests.”

“Like Clint.” The archness in her tone suggested she didn’t approve of the latter, but Steve couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t especially a fan of it either, but Tony’s heart was in the right place and the man had a lot on his plate right now.

“Yes,” he admitted. “We’re working on it—these things take time.” He shared her impatience, but he also understood the stakes better now. “When is your meeting with the committee?”

Had they scheduled it yet?

“Next week,” she said with a little shrug. “Perhaps unless it must be rescheduled for a mission. Stark told me he wanted to give me time to settle in. Clint said the meeting is more for show than for substance?”

“It’s—perfunctory. They just want to see you and talk to you, get a feel for who you are.”

A small smile twisted her lips, but it lacked any kind of real amusement. “I don’t know who I am. I am not sure I will be able to help them much.”

It wasn’t easy, no matter how old you were and she was still a kid. “Why don’t you and Vis come to dinner with me and Sam tonight? Be like old times.”

She shook her head. “Vis and I have…a lot to talk about and I would be more comfortable if it were done in private.”

“All right, but you’re welcome. I want you to know that.”

“Am I?” She glanced again toward the front. “I don’t know…but it feels like we are all in different places, and though one of us is still missing, no one is looking for her. That—that doesn’t feel welcome.” Then she pushed away from the wall and walked up front, effectively ending the conversation.

Steve closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Lying was not something he wanted to get good at. But even the act of keeping his mind clear around her was more taxing than he suspected—and it wasn’t fair to Wanda. She was right, he was different, and they were all in different places. She and Sam were trading places so Wanda could talk to Vision. And there was none of the awkwardness between she and Sam that existed between she and Steve at the moment.

“You good?” Sam asked when Steve pushed off the wall to sit on the benches. He tried not to think about how it flipped over into a rescue cot or how Natasha had collapsed on it not all that long ago—or the conversation they’d had a few hours after that when he’d woken there bruised and battered from the fight in Volgograd.

“I’m good.” He summoned a smile. “We close?”

“About fifteen minutes or so. Still on for dinner?” Sam studied him closely, despite behaving casually. Steve hated that he noticed the subtle changes in his demeanor.

“Told you it sounded good, and you’re right—we need to catch up.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What did you have in mind?”

“I know this place in Brooklyn, since you’re living at the Tower and all, we could head out there, drinks, food, music—it’s a quiet place, the kind you’d like.”

“I’m not that old,” he pointed out, a little irked by the suggestion.

“No man, but you don’t like modern clubs and let’s not pretend we’re going to try that again. They got a dart board and a billiards table, sometimes they have live music—I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s nice. And they have an onion steakburger that’s to die for.”

That did sound good. “You know, we could just hit the diner out on Route 50 if you want—I mean you don’t have to come all the way into the city.”

“It’s no problem,” Sam told him. “I got a meeting tomorrow at the local VA in Queens. I’m going to do some volunteering there as well as the one up by the compound. I can sleep on your sofa, right?”

Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. In DC, Nat had slept on his sofa a lot and he’d crashed at Sam’s place a few times after SHIELD before they’d hit the road to look for Bucky. But Nat’s things were on his floor, and that was her safe space now and he intended to keep it that way. Her floor and his. “There’s like ninety floors Sam,” Steve told him easily. “You can definitely use one of the guest ones.”

The engines adjusted as Vision brought them in to land thankfully, and it kept Sam from asking any uncomfortable follow up questions. Maybe they needed to read the others in. They had valid reasons for keeping it a closed loop, but if they were all on the same page, maybe they could find a joint solution faster.

Less than an hour after dropping off Wanda and Vision, they headed back to the Tower. Sam had changed and grabbed an overnight bag, storing his gear and wings on the jet as needed. Having changed while Sam was off the jet, Steve settled for jeans, a button down, and his leather jacket. His phone was tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket where he’d feel it if they called.

Bucky kept in touch regularly, which—Steve had to admit—was a nice change from Nat’s normal radio silence. Then again, talking to her on the phone for a few stolen seconds just left him hungry for more. It was worse because Sam had been right there when Bucky called, and while he hadn’t asked anything, he’d given Steve a couple of assessing looks.

Sam filled in the time out to Brooklyn with updates on his old group from DC and how his mom was doing. A couple of his more colorful stories had Steve laughing by the time they were walking in the doors of the bar which looked kind of like the pubs he’d visited in London during the war.

Maybe that was why he didn’t notice Sam’s too bright grin and playful expression until it was a beat too late. He’d followed his friend around to one of the tables on the far side of the bar, away from the live band where they could enjoy the music but not be deafened by it. Honestly, Steve was a little caught up in the dark wood, and comfortable seating. The dart board was there, the billiards table—heck there was even a small dance floor and it still managed to be cozy despite the crowd.

“Hey, sorry to keep you waiting. We ran a little late.” Sam was saying when Steve turned to face him again and then paused. Sam wasn’t talking to him but to the blonde sliding out of the booth.

“Hey Sam,” she greeted him, but then smiled at Steve. “Hey Steve.”

“Sharon,” he stumbled over the name and his suddenly dry throat. He hadn’t seen Sharon Carter since she brought them their gear after Bucky’s breakout in Berlin.

Not since he kissed her.

“I like the beard,” she told him, then stepped forward and gave him a quick hug. He kept his body distant, not quite closing his arms around her as he _stared_ at Sam. His friend shot him a thumbs up before Steve released Sharon to ease away from her.

This was awkward as hell. Worse than when Bucky used to set him up with double dates.

“Hey guys, why don’t I let you two catch up, and I’ll just be over at the bar getting a drink…or three.” Sam didn’t wait for any response before abandoning him.

Sam set him up.

With Sharon.

“So,” she said, motioning to the booth. “Care to join me?”

 

**Bucky**

 

 

Bucky leaned against the wall, his attention on the alley as he took a long drag on the smoke. He was just a guy who’d slipped out to have a cigarette. Natalia would be heading out with Lover boy in a couple of minutes, and he was her backup.

She’d spent a couple of hours combing through the code she’d copied while he’d gone over their gear. Instead of a tact suit, however, she was once against dressed in street clothes—dark brown jeans and a white shirt under a heavier leather jacket rather than a dress—for this operation and he was back in the mesh armored suit she’d had made for him. At least her jacket also had a bullet proof lining.

 _“_ It’s not him,” she’d said, after she’d put her laptop aside. “I don’t recognize the hacker signatures in that code, but it’s not Lover boy.”

“Are you certain?” Bucky had asked. “Or do you just not want to believe it’s him.”

She hadn’t answered, and he hadn’t the heart to pick at that possible wound. Natalia had faced enough damn disappointments. If Lover boy turned out to be one, he was going to break the man’s arm if not his neck. The sound of her heels clicking along the alley way alerted him to their arrival.

“And there’s your man,” Lover boy commented as he appeared first with Natalia a full step behind him. She slowed, leaving Lover boy trapped between them. “Surprised you weren’t with her…” But he hesitated a beat, then glanced over his shoulder toward Natalia. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. What’s up, boo?”

Bucky gave him situational awareness credit. The guy shifted to stand sideways, his back to the wall of the building Bucky was currently leaning on. It gave Lover boy line of sight to both of them, the same way Bucky had line of sight on him and the foot traffic on the street beyond.

“That’s what I want to know,” Natalia said, all of her weight resting on the firm plant of her left leg, leaving her right free for motion if she needed it. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, and like Bucky, she was armed.

Lover boy slid the sunglasses off his face, which seemed a good plan considering how dark the alley was, but the shadows hid his eyes. “Talk to me chère, you don’t got to set up a move on me.”

His jacket was open and his hands free save for the sunglasses, which he tucked into an inner pocket. Bucky took another drag on the cigarette; he had a part to play but Natalia was wholly focused on Lover boy.

“Who else requested the info I did, Remy?” It was the first time she’d used his real name in Bucky’s understanding.

“No one, Tash, I don’t screw around with you.” While Bucky didn’t know _Remy_ , the guy didn’t seem to be playing any games. “I told you it would take me a hot minute, and it did, but no one else asked and I think you know better than to ask me if I spoke out of turn.”

“Then help me out—who else would want the schematics and server farm codes?” She offered him a bone.

“What makes you think I’d know?” But even Bucky could hear the evasion in the question.

He squeezed off the end of the cigarette, extinguishing it with two fingers on his left hand.

“You know everything that happens in NOLA,” she retorted.

“I only act like I know everything, boo. You taught me that.” The slow smirk on Natalia’s face confirmed that little gem. “But you’re right, I do know a guy who might have been interested. He never came to me, never made any offers and to the best of my knowledge, no one was auctioning it.”

“Who?”

“That’s a bigger favor, Tash. One you don’t have the investment banked for.” Remy pushed away from the wall, spreading his hands wide. “Now I’d give it to you for free—but you don’t like doing that. So, how about you scratch my back and I’ll…”

Natalia spotted the red dot a split second ahead of Bucky, and she darted forward, seizing Remy’s arm and yanking him away before three bullets exploded into the brick where he’d been standing.

The suppressor muffled the sound of the sniper’s rifle, but Bucky tracked it from the angles. There was only one spot with a decent view to make that shot and he fired twice right at it. The first bullet rousted the sniper. The second struck a body.

“Move,” he ordered. His gun hadn’t been silenced, and it wouldn’t be long before the police sirens in the distance headed this way. But he was more concerned about the sound of boots hustling on the pavement.

“C’mon,” Natalia echoed his order and he spared a single glance to see her dragging Remy deeper into the alley. She’d chosen this one after their scout because it connected to a small network behind the street fronts on Royal and Bourbon streets. They weren’t generally frequented by the tourists and the locals used them when they wanted to travel undetected. Trusting her knowledge, Bucky covered their backs until they were around a corner.

The booted feet were following.

Brick work exploded to his left and he slowed, using the corner to his advantage. He caught the first guy coming round the corner, breaking his arm as he wrenched it upward and then smashed his gun against his head to knock him out. Not giving the second guy time to react, he kicked him in the chest and sent him crashing into the wall, before catching the third and tossing him face first into the brick next to his friend. They piled into a heap.

With no more behind him, he plunged back into the darkness of the alley and followed the path Natalia mapped earlier. When he reached Royal street, he slid his gun away and blended in with the traffic. Natalia stood near the mouth of Pirate Alley, Remy in the shadows next to her. When she caught his gaze she motioned with a single head jerk and then vanished into the shadows, blending seamlessly.

Bypassing another downed pair, seated like they were passed out drunk if you didn't look to closely, he caught up to them as Remy used a card to slice open a lock on the wrought iron gate. The flash of light in his hand blocked when Natalia closed the distance. Then they were in the walled courtyard of a cathedral. He did something to seal the point, then they were moving again.

“Stay close, boo,” Remy murmured, and took point, Bucky trusted Natalia between he and Remy—preferring to be firmly at her back rather than having the other man between them. Their pursuers may have only been those four, but he didn’t relax their vigilance even as locks tumbled on an old door, and then they were inside the musty church.

The scent tumbled him back decades to mass. Lapsed Catholicism didn’t relieve him of his guilt. But he made a promise to light a candle later and apologize—particularly since he was walking in armed and ready to spill blood if necessary.

“Upstairs,” Remy murmured as he lead the way up stone steps tucked into the corner. They climbed all the way to the top, and then outside into the open air, a full story above any of the closest buildings. The stone work crenellations gave them ample cover, but he wasn’t fond of the open air on all sides.

Finally, Remy slowed and leaned against a wall before pulling out his own cigarettes. He lit one then offered the pack to Natalia and he. They both shook their heads. “Your choice,” he muttered, and tucked the smokes away. There was a faint shake to his hands as he took a long drag. “So—what I was saying earlier about the ask…I think I’m in your debt now.”

Natalia shrugged. “I’m pretty sure those were the bounty hunters from Limbo.” A guess, maybe. Bucky hadn’t taken the time to identify them before he eliminated the threat.

“Well, when the red dot was on my chest, I’ll decide where the debt goes, yeah?”

She spread her hands. “I just need to know who, Remy. Who do you think was interested?”

“Just the name, right?” Despite the save, the guy wanted to clarify the terms.

“If that’s all you have…” But Natalia didn’t let him off the hook so easily.

“Fair—Miles Lydon. Not sure where he hangs his hat. Used to be a regular at Limbo, but pissed off the wrong people. He’s a hacktivist.” Bucky had no idea what the hell that was, but it didn’t matter, Natalia did. “He’s not a fan of Roxxon. Can’t say most people around here are—but I don’t do business with Miles. He’s not all there.”

“But he is a local?” Natalia confirmed.

“Last time I checked—which wasn’t recent.” Then he snuffed out his cigarette and took steps to close on Natalia. “Did you really think I sold you out?”

“No,” Bucky answered for her, and it stopped the other man in his tracks. “She did not.” And she hadn’t, even if she’d had to ask.

Remy eyed him. “You don’t trust me.”

“No, I don’t.” He wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

With a nod, Remy grinned and he was all teeth. “I really do like this one Tash.” He glanced at her. “So where are you parked?”

“Close enough.” She didn’t say anything when he took her hand and lifted it for a kiss.

“You want to come back to Limbo? I have resources—help you find Miles, maybe pin down more on your peddlers. No one will touch you there.” But she shook her head. Remy sighed…

“What?” She pulled her hand from his and her tone sharpened.

“There’s someone at Limbo that maybe you should go and see,” Remy admitted.

Bucky shifted his weight, ready to move between them.

“So you _were_ going to set me up?”

“No, I’d have told you—like I’m telling you now. Guy may have caught wind you were in the area thanks to the hunters in the corner, but he just showed up earlier tonight. Haven’t seen him in a long while and last I heard, he was dead. Course—he looked pretty good for a dead guy.”

“Who?” Suspicion laced her cool tone, but only because he knew her. She betrayed no emotion in her expression.

“Fury.”

 

**Steve**

Despite all his efforts, Steve couldn’t get past his discomfort of having Sharon seated next to him in the booth—it was a horseshoe shape, so she was more or less in the middle. They’d both insisted Sam join them, but his friend kept finding reasons to slip away. Like now when he’d gone to play pool with someone he’d been chatting with at the bar.

“You know,” Sharon said quietly, snagging his attention. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t realize Sam planned it as a surprise.”

“The dinner?” He took a drink of the beer. It was his third one, and while the alcohol couldn’t remotely touch his system, he’d been leaning on it heavily for periodic breaks to walk up to the bar and order fresh drinks rather than wait for the waitress.

“Yeah,” she said, nudging her plate away. “It’s been a few weeks, and I knew you were back, saw it on the news…figured you’d call when you got a moment.”

Or never, because it honestly hadn’t occurred to him and he was pretty sure that said more about him than her. “We’ve been busy,” he admitted. “Getting everything sorted out. I guess I owe you an apology, too. I—I didn’t ask how it went for you after Germany. After you helped.”

She gave a little shrug before taking a drink of her own beer. She was getting low and his knee jerk reaction was to offer to go and get her another one—but it was her third, too. “It wasn’t—fun. But they couldn’t prove I’d taken the items, only that they’d been removed. I got bounced from the terrorism task force and back here. Been working primarily at Langley—doing analysis.”

“You don’t enjoy it?”

“Not really—I was a field agent with SHIELD before Fury put me on…” She winced.

“Babysitting duty,” he said drily. Just the beginning of his bad day after visiting Peggy to run into her in the hall where she warned him he’d left music on in his apartment. Ten minutes later, she outted herself as Agent Thirteen. She’d probably been assigned because Nat refused to keep reporting on him—and she’d disabled the bugs in his apartment, or at least most of them.

“I’m not going to apologize for doing my job,” she told him primly. “That said, I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did.”

“There’s not usually a good way to find out someone is lying to you.” Especially now that he was the one keeping secrets. He tipped up the bottle and drained it.

“Depends on the why,” she told him. “Sometimes lies are what we tell ourselves to get through a day, and sometimes they’re what we have to say to help other people. The important part is to do your best, and if you can’t…or if it’s not enough…”

“…you start over.” He finished the line with a huffed chuckle. “I gotta wonder if Peggy had to start over a lot.”

“Sometimes,” Sharon answered. “She didn’t tell anyone everything—you know except for Uncle Daniel. I’m pretty sure he knew. But she knew how to live, and she knew the price of being an agent. Some prices are worth paying.”

“You really believe that?” He leaned back in the seat, and stretched out a leg. He’d been careful to keep their contact to a minimum, even accidentally.

“I do,” she told him. “It’s why I don’t regret helping you in Geneva or in Germany.” She’d been the one to give him Bucky’s location to get ahead of the security forces coming for him. “It’s why I’m being careful to not ask you how he’s doing now.”

After scratched at his bearded jawline, he said, “Better. We’ve been taking some meetings on his status and he’s—healing.” Every day seemed a bit better for him, whether it was the memories he was recovering or the time spent with them. He didn’t think he’d ever be just Bucky anymore, but there was more of his friend in there than he thought any of them realized. “He’s free—that’s the important part.”

“I’m happy for you—not sure I’m quite there to be happy for him,” she gave a guarded shrug. “But I’m happy for you, and I hope it keeps working out. I can’t imagine…” She shook her head, then pushed her bottle aside to cover his hand with hers, and Steve froze. “Look, I know it’s not fair. The blame he faces for actions that weren’t his personally—but the day he broke out in Germany, he hurt a lot of people.”

Steve was aware.

“So it makes it hard to think about that guy and match him to the stories Aunt Peg used to tell me—or even the man in the exhibit at the museum.”

“I can’t say I’m much like the guy they talk about there either,” he assured her, and carefully extracted his hand from her touch.

“Steve, you’re better than that guy.” But she didn’t try to take his hand again.

“Hey, how we doing over here?” Sam asked as he set a fresh beer on the table. “You folks need another round?”

“Actually,” Sharon said, pulling her attention from Steve to focus on Sam. “I need to get going. I have a meeting in the morning.”

“With the committee?”

Wait…what?

Steve frowned.

“Thanks Sam,” Sharon muttered, then looked at Steve. “Nothing is official yet, but with the reinstatement of the full Avengers, they’re looking for a new handler for the team—not just a liaison and not just Tony having to bridge the gap, but a civilian who can step into the breach. A little bit like what Romanoff used to do between the team and SHIELD when the Avengers first formed.”

“And they offered the position to you?” He really didn’t know what to think about that, and he wasn’t sure what Tony was going to think about it either.

“Well, I applied,” she admitted. “It wouldn’t be field work, not as much, but—I mentioned it to Sam when we ran into each other in DC.”

When they ran into each other… Steve didn’t look at Sam, but kept his focus on Sharon. She shifted a little uncomfortably under his scrutiny. “So you want to work with us?”

“I’d like to be useful, I think I can bring something to the team—and I know all of you. You trust me, which…which should help I would think. There’s plenty of room at the compound or so Sam was saying, and that would make me boots on the ground and I can run interference as needed.”

Sharon Carter living at the compound and working with the Avengers. It might be a good fit, but… “Well, good luck tomorrow then.”

“You don’t sound like you really mean that,” she said slowly.

“And I think I’ll just go…be over here…” Sam said as he walked away.

“Look I’m not going to ask if you’re all right with me applying for the position and I’m not expecting anything out of it either. Might be nice if we’re in the same place at the same time for a while—but—applying for this isn’t about you.”

“It’s not?” He wanted to believe that, and he was having a hard time with the fact Sam set this up and she was conveniently looking at moving to New York now that he was there.

“No,” she told him flatly, and her eyes went cool. If he wasn’t sure about her mood earlier, he had no doubt he’d pissed her off now. “I don’t change my life for any man, certainly not one that kisses me and then disappears and can’t be bothered to drop me a post card when he re-emerges. And you know what, that’s fine. I’m a big girl, I’ve been kissed before.” She exhaled a breath. “And I’m not normally in the habit of explaining myself, but let me be clear on this—I was in a good position at SHIELD, I’d been working my way up and I was doing a lot of good—or so I thought. Then it was gone. My aunt’s legacy—corrupted and stained and gone. So…I went to the CIA. Thought I could do some good there, Joint Terrorism Task Force, saving the world stuff and I earned my way quickly to a solid position on that team…then Germany…and now I’m back analyzing reports, and data, and working in a cubicle where I’m going to be lucky if I rate a new desk much less a promotion. But that’s fine, my choices—I did that. This job—being liaison to the Avengers? That’s a place I can do some good. So I’m going to do it, to start over. You and I not withstanding. If you can’t respect that, then I don’t think we have a lot more we need to say to each other.”

Steve sighed, “I’m sorry,” he said, and it was his turn to hold up his hands. “That was—unfair of me to just assume anything. You caught me off guard—and it’s been a long few months.”

“And you don’t know who you can trust, I get that,” she said. “Hopefully, if I get this job, I can be someone you can trust. We can do some real good.”

“That could help,” he admitted. “Don’t let them give you a hard time.”

“I won’t.”

He stood as she slid out, trying to be a bit more gracious about the hug than he had been the first time. When she pressed a kiss to his cheek, he didn’t linger and backed off. “Let us know how it goes?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure as team lead, you’ll be the first to know.” Then she squeezed his arm and lifted a hand to wave at Sam before she headed out and Steve slumped back into the booth.

Sam followed her out, and Steve motioned to the waitress. She dropped by, bringing him a fresh beer and the check. He’d just set his card on the check when Sam returned.

When his friend sat in the booth opposite him, they both stared at each other and Steve wrestled with what to say. He was both annoyed and not in the same instant. Finally, he said, “So—was the invitation to grab a bite because Sharon was going to be here or was she here because we were going to be?”

Leaning forward, Sam rested his forearms on the table. “The former,” he told him. “I thought you could use a pick me up. You’ve been down more than up lately. A good wingman looks after his friend.”

“By ambushing me.”

“You and Sharon were close there, Steve. I saw it. Bucky saw it. I mean it was hard to miss, you were right in front of us.” He spread his hands. “I’m sorry I sprang her on you—but it seemed to go well.”

“Yeah not everything is what it seems.”

“Then why don’t you tell me how it is,” Sam spoke in quiet, measured tones. It was the voice he used in his therapy groups and it practically swore an oath to be understanding. “Let me help.”

“I don’t really need help,” he told him. “I need to be able to trust my friends and not be put into situations where I feel like the bad guy.”

“You weren’t going to call Sharon.” It wasn’t a question.

He shook his head. “No, she’s nice. But no.”

“That could get awkward if she gets the job,” Sam admitted.

“She’ll be good at it, and she’s professional. We can handle it.” He could handle it. Just put their cards on the table.

“So—when you were on the phone earlier with Bucky—and no man I’m trying not to pry—you sounded upset. Is there more between the two of you—you know—is that why?”

“Is that why what?” Steve frowned.

“You know, it’s cool, right? If that’s the deal with you two. I mean you’re really close and I don’t know how out you could have been in the 40s but…”

Steve blinked once and then scrubbed a hand over his face. Sam was asking if he and Bucky were involved.

Hand to God, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Hey, I can butt out. Seriously—” Sam said, backpedalling verbally. “Really isn’t any of my business. But—look, you have my support. Just want to look out for you.”

“I appreciate that—no more set ups okay? No more accidental dates.” He had one woman he wanted to date, and she was letting him so he needed that to be clear.

“You got it…”

“And Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“For the record? Bucky and I are _friends_. So take that speculation off the table, yeah?” He didn’t need to give Bucky any more reasons to dislike him. He really didn’t.

“Done man, I swear. Done.” Then, “You want to grab a game while we’re here?”

 

**Bucky**

 

Standing on the other side of a one-way mirror, Bucky glared into the room. Natalia hadn’t wanted him in there. Nothing to threaten his pardon, and she wouldn't budge on it. She’d talk to Nick, find out what he wanted, then go. The meeting was taking place upstairs in Limbo, in a private room that Remy apparently kept for just such occasions. Fury wouldn’t be allowed to follow her when she left, and she was giving him five minutes.

Remy re-entered the room to stand next to him, arms folded. “You look like you wanna kill that guy.”

“No,” was all Bucky said. He had nearly killed the guy. Thought he’d succeeded. Apparently Nick Fury was a hard man to kill. The man in question sat in a chair, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded together looking like he was relaxing in his own home rather than in an observation room.

No way Fury didn’t know he was being observed.

The door to the hallway opened and Natalia slipped inside. She planted herself at the door, arms relaxed at her sides. The posture she wore said she couldn’t care less. “Nick.”

“Tasha.” He straightened in the chair, then motioned to the chair opposite his. “I believe that’s your seat.”

“I believe I’m fine standing. You have four minutes and thirty seconds left, Nick. Let’s not play games. What do you want?”

“Same thing I wanted in New York—and in DC—and in Budapest.”

“I’m retired.”

“So you stated,” he said, setting both hands on the table and facing her. “Tasha—it’s been a mess for a few years now, but we have a chance to really make it right. Aren’t you the one always saying you have red in your ledger?”

“He’s a bastard,” Remy commented.

Bucky nodded once.

Natalia remained unmoved. “I said no, Nick. Do you need me to translate that into a few other languages for you?”

“No,” he told her, leaning back in the chair and crossing his legs again. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you’re not still running missions, and ops. That you’re not still trying to be better than who you were. Then I want you to tell me how long you think that’s going to last if and _when_ they catch up to you. There’s a kill on sight order, Natasha. Kill. On. Sight.”

She shrugged. “You sent Barton with a KOS order too, and that worked out fine for me.”

With a shake of his head, Nick blew out a breath. “Fine you want me to be real with you?”

“That’d be a nice change.”

“Then I’ll be as real as it gets.” He tapped the table. “You’re pissed at me because I left you out of the loop after the assassination attempt. I can respect that. It was never personal.”

Natalia didn’t respond, nor did a flicker of emotion appear in her expression. From her chin to her eyes, she seemed remote, almost blank.

“You did us all a service that day, you backed Rogers, you got him out, you helped reveal Hydra's influence, and you put everything out on the net to take it all down. Even you. Then I went hunting Hydra cells and you turned me down. I got it. You didn’t trust me anymore. But you trusted me before—and I’m asking you to trust me again. You’re one of the few people I know who can…” He hesitated and glanced at the mirror. “...who can accomplish anything they set their minds to.”

“Not what he was going to say,” Remy commented. “Apparently he doesn’t want us to know what it is.”

He likely didn’t want Natalia to know, just for her to agree.

“And you’ve got friends on this side of things, Natasha. Friends who can run interference—just like we did before.”

All that earned him was a raised eyebrow.

“Damn Natasha, we helped you. We kept the hit squads off your back, buried your list of kills, and gave you a fresh start—we can do it again.”

Natalia snorted. “You want me to develop a new cover, become someone else, march back into the fold and what—become your pet assassin for the shadow SHIELD you’ve built.”

His expression grew measured, but controlled. She’d scored a hit.

“I want you to still be alive next week, next month—next year. After the stunt you pulled, you got the Avengers back together. You did everything I could have ever asked you to do.” He shot the glass another look, then stood. Natalia didn’t flinch as he closed the distance and with his back to the glass whatever he was saying dropped out.

“Can you hear him?” Remy frowned, dialing something up on the wall.

He wasn’t talking aloud, and he was making sure they couldn’t read his lips. Bucky could only judge from Natalia’s expression, which didn’t shift an iota, betraying nothing of her emotions. But that in and of itself was a tell. Natalia didn’t want anyone to know how she felt, so she caged it.

“No, Nick.” She’d straightened and looked him in the eye. “For the last time, no. Stop looking for me. Stop asking me to come back. Stop trying to threaten me into compliance—you of all people should remember that doesn’t end well.”

“I’m not threatening you Tasha, but if you stay out in the cold there’s not a whole lot I’m going to be able to do to  _help_ you.”

“Are you going to send someone else to kill me, Nick?” She tilted her head and Bucky’s whole being went cold. That Natalia was every inch the predator and Nick Fury seemed to realize it.

“I don’t want to,” he admitted. “But I told you once you weren’t going to be able to stay a free agent. You’re too dangerous and too many people would kill to take what you have.”

Her serum.

“Are you one of them?” Nothing friendly inhabited her gaze.

“No,” he answered her, and there was an honest ring in his voice. “Dammit, Natasha…I don’t want to send anyone after you, but if the choices are let the committee or some other government get their hands on you or us? I’m going to choose us every time. At least I know what lines I won’t cross with you.”

“Nick,” she said softly, straightening fully. “If you come for me—make sure you kill me. Because no matter what cage you put me in or how softly you try furnish it, I will get out. And I won’t leave anyone behind to put me back in it. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” he told her. “So this is it?”

“It would seem.”

“Take care of yourself, Tasha.”

She reached a hand behind her, and opened the door.

“For what it’s worth,” Nick added. “I hope everything works out for you. I’m still on your side.”

She didn’t answer him, closing the door and disappearing into the hall. Bucky spared Fury a look as he turned to face the glass and put his hands behind his back. His expression was unreadable, but he said, “You better be looking after her.”

“Is that a warning or a threat?” Remy asked.

“Probably both,” Bucky told him. “Don’t let him follow.”

“I got it. Good luck with boo.”

He didn’t need luck.

Natalia waited for him at the entrance to the stairwell. The meeting had taken place on the fourth floor. They were going to descend to the second and out the passage they’d left via the night before.

They didn’t talk until they were at the car, and then it was only Natalia accepting the keys with a murmured thanks before sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Natalia,” he said after several minutes when he realized they weren’t heading back to the safe house.

“We have a lead on Montague,” she said, her voice flat and lifeless. “I want to finish that job for Beaumont.”

A beat passed, then he studied her profile. No emotion seeped out from behind her cool mask. The amused woman, the playful teasing, the sultry smiles, even the professional smirk—all missing. It pitched him eerily to the past. Meetings with Karpov, cold assignments, and walking through carnage to the next assignment.

“Natalia…”

“I don’t want to talk about it, James. I just want to finish the mission. You in?”

Of course he was in. No way in hell was she going in alone in her current frame of mind. “Fury is wrong,” was what he said instead.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But he’s still wrong. You’re not out in the cold Natalia. You never will be again.”

She glanced at him, the first crack in the ice since he’d met her at the stairwell. “I used to think he cared.”

“He does care,” Bucky told her, absolutely sure of that. “I just think he’s shit at showing it. But he wouldn't keep coming for you if he didn't care. No matter what bullshit he was trying to feed you in there.”

That pulled a hint of a smile. It wasn’t much, but it was still something. He settled back in the seat. She needed to focus on something else. They could do that, too.

“Where are we going and what’s the plan?”


	27. Doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Nat go after the traffickers, Steve and Tony talk

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

**Doors**

**Bucky**

 

Their destination was a series of long houses in a desolate and isolated area close enough to New Orleans that the ghost town effect threw him. What the hell disaster had left ruptured pavement to knock and kick at the car as she drove over it? Natalia had killed the headlights, relying only on their vision and a slim crescent moon to navigate. Parking next to a stained and broken house surrounded on all sides by an unrelenting chain fence and marked with a fat, dark X on the side, he couldn’t shake the uneasiness crawling over his flesh.

He took watch while she changed into her tact suit, arming herself, and then she covered him while he did the same. No words were necessary, not that Natalia had favored him with many since leaving Limbo for the second time. The meeting with Fury had changed something, shifting the landscape beneath their feet in some fundamental way.

The truly awkward part for him came when he settled the chest armor into place. With his left arm bare, and a black heavy glove on his right hand, the Soldier stepped up stretching out beneath his skin as though to resettle himself. The distance gave him perspective even as they assessed their environs and their partner.

Natalia shot him a glance as he closed the trunk. Even in the dark, she stood out like the flame of a forest fire that once kindled could consume everything in its path. The single tilt of her head asked him a question.

Ready?

He’d told Steve he wasn’t ready to join the team. Didn’t think he wanted it. Help Stevie? Yes. Put himself right back into the thick of other people’s wars? Not so much. Decades of fighting, killing, and destruction to serve the purpose of others left him with no appetite for destruction.

Or so he thought.

Their target: Raymond Montague, a financier, with shady political connections and even grimmer business ones. He had financial interests in two shipping companies, both funneling large amounts of cargo through the Port of New Orleans. Montague was one of three of the FBI’s top suspects in human trafficking from South America, primarily women and children. They’d linked him to at least five separate cartels but only circumstantially, and it wasn’t enough for a warrant.

Natalia’s opinion: Her FBI contact, Beaumont knew he was dirty, but he couldn’t prove it to a court. Money talked, it always had. Montague swam in waters made filthy with cash and human suffering. Natalia saw something in those files no one else did. She  _knew_ he was the one. 

Their job: Kick in the doors, eliminate all threats, leave the evidence intact if possible, but locate the most current prisoners and any records of previous sales. When he asked Natalia if she planned to go after them, her smile ignited something in him. These women and children were the abandoned. The preyed upon. If they didn’t come for them, who would?

He nodded once.

He was more than ready.

They moved together, traveling in the shadows of the lonely, forlorn buildings. He made a mental note to ask her about this place later. It left him with an eerie sense of familiarity that he couldn’t shake. Natalia slid next to him and crouched three blocks later, using the porch of yet another abandoned house to stare at a pair of houses, framed together behind another wooden fence—but something about their layout was wrong as if…

“They built between the buildings,” Natalia murmured in his ear. “Clever, they weathered the exterior so that anyone who wasn’t from here wouldn’t notice that it had been two houses, converted into a warehouse.”

Clever.

That was a word he’d use for it.

He didn’t ask the natural follow up question… where were the people who had lived here?

“You take the front and I’ll take the back?” The question stilled him. He and the Soldier stared at the building. There weren’t even floodlights outside. Nor any obvious vehicles. What few he had seen on their way over had all been wreckages, damaged and as abandoned to time as the houses and overgrown, weed-choked lawns. No obvious presence of external security.

They had no intelligence for what waited for them inside, but whoever was there relied on the sense of abandonment to camouflage them effectively enough to not need security.

If she went in the front with him, that left the rear exits exposed—they could lose targets. He cared less about those than any of the civilians they might take out with them or worse, just execute. Killing potential witnesses may leave bodies, but they didn’t leave anyone to say definitively what happened.

Words, long forgotten, whispered out of the past. Natalia stood next to him, staring at the bones of a former Nazi concentration camp. Liberated by the allies in ‘45, the camp itself had sat empty and abandoned for six years. Construction was repurposing the area for a gulag. They were only here for a night before moving on to another assignment. They’d been given a barracks, but Natalia hadn’t wanted to stay inside—the walls, she told him, were too soaked in blood and terror.

When she went for a walk, he accompanied. No one from the camp or the construction workers bothered them. In fact, they were given a wide berth which suited the Soldier fine. Natalia had slowed however, at a great eruption of dirt, the land had been disturbed by the equipment and then swiftly abandoned.

It was a yard of bones jutting up from the earth. A skeletal hand here, a femur there, and not far from where they stood, a half-crushed skull. “Bodies,” she’d whispered. “Are the most anonymous of us all. You and I might be ghosts—but we can still talk even if only in whispers.”

The shudder of memory crawled along his spine like a revenant crawling up from its grave. The Soldier had always found the images disturbing, but he hadn’t known why.

Bucky got it.

Bucky had been a prisoner.

He could have been in that boneyard, he and the rest of the 107th.

“Take the back,” he told her. “Find me in the center.”

“Give me two minutes.”

A feather light touch along the back of his neck, then she was gone.

Maybe they were ghosts, but they would leave no one’s mother, sister, or daughter to become forgotten bones. Their stories had been ground down by the past, and by the machines of war that wanted to use them—but they were the perfect weapons to make sure it happened to no one else.

At one minute and fifty seconds, he rose to his feet, and stalked across the cracked and damaged road _. Let them see him coming_ , the Soldier whispered in his ear. _They deserve to be afraid._

At two minutes exactly, he kicked the front door right off its hinges.

 

**Tony**

“Boss, Captain Rogers has returned,” Friday informed him and Tony peeled his bloodshot and sore eyes off the holo screen to glance at the time. After two in the morning—good for Cap.

“Invite him up, baby girl.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and pushed away from the lab desk. He was working in one of the main labs he favored in the Tower, not his private one. Peter had been over for a few hours earlier, and while he’d not gotten far on the new armor build—he had figured out a way to use a vibranium framework to help offset the force exerted by the person wearing the armor versus the force exerted against it.

The formula would work. Tony could see that in the math. Now to see if he could talk T’Challa into letting him have enough to experiment with in order to get the kid on the build. When Red assigned the kid to scut work in order to keep him out of trouble while she was off playing vigilante or bounty hunter or whatever job it was she was doing, Tony hadn’t seen the overall benefit to him in it. But, the kid had been by after school two days running and he’d done exactly what Tony asked him to do—even tweaking with the math until they were both happy with it.

It helped. Clint's sarcastic observations, and quiet bullying to eat hadn't been unwelcome either. Even if he wasn't getting quite as much done as he'd wanted.

The door to the lab buzzed as Steve entered. Tony diverted toward the coffee pot then eyed the burnt and blackened glass carafe with a disgruntled sigh. Not the first time. He removed it from the burner and deposited it in the trash before retrieving a new one from the cabinet.

“Hey Cap,” he greeted as he got a fresh pot of coffee going. The first drops releasing the perfect wake me up scent. “You were out late.”

“Had dinner with Sam,” he said by way of explanation. “He’s crashing for the night on one of the guest floors, hope you don’t mind. Friday said she’d take care of it.”

“That’s fine,” Tony glanced over as Steve settled against one of the counters, hands in his pockets and a resigned expression on his face. “You don’t look like you had a good time.”

That wasn’t exactly why he’d invited him up, but Cap kind of looked like hell. Red had been gone a couple of days and it showed. While he might regret it later, he raked a hand through his hair and studied the super soldier. “Something happen?”

Steve grimaced, then dragged his hands out of his pockets to run one over his face with a long sigh. “You know—I might regret this, but yeah. Sam tried to fix me up tonight.”

The echo of his earlier thought was funny enough, but the second part of that sentence made Tony do a double take. “Awkward,” he said the first word that came to mind. “Was she at least cute?”

His arid look could have dried out a riverbed. “She was Sharon Carter.”

That statement held a lot of weight and meaning—oh. “Sharon—as in related to Aunt Peggy—Carter?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, then looked at him, as if waiting. “Go ahead—give me hell.”

Squinting at him, Tony considered it. “Well, a—that’s too easy a target, and b—didn’t she do you a solid back in Germany?”

Cap didn’t even blink. Then again, maybe Red had already told him she’d tracked him down by following Sharon. Maybe she hadn’t. And honestly, wasn’t worth poking that particular bear.

“Yeah, but she’s in New York to interview for a job…new Avengers liaison for the committee.” Okay, that was news.

Tony rolled his head from side to side. The burning in his eyes retreated as his mind focused elsewhere. “Former SHIELD and CIA asset, family legacy already familiar with most of the major players—you trust her?”

Steve hesitated. Giving him a beat to decide on an answer—even if the very pregnant pause wasn’t already one—Tony poured two cups of coffee and carried one of to set next to Steve before he slid back onto his stool and switched the screens to the data he’d been compiling.

“I want to,” Steve admitted. “My reservations might be more personal than professional. She’s—a solid agent. Or was.”

“I know her,” Tony told him. “Cursory acquaintance, she was a lot younger, but I saw her at some events. Enough to say hello and we both knew her aunt very well.” Steve didn’t even give him a pity flinch. Damn if Cap hadn’t come a long way, almost made Tony proud. “But she was undercover as your neighbor for months and “spied” on you for Fury under the guise of “protection,” and then she betrayed her oaths to get your gear out of a secure facility and bring it to you. So—tell me again how solid and trustworthy she is?”

Because that was the crux of it. Trust, or the failure of it, had broken the team. He and Steve might never be best friends, but the fact they’d fallen back on brutal honesty had some perks.

“I don’t really feel like I get a say in that one,” Steve confessed with a grimace. The beard had done a lot of things for the guy, including masking some of his too readable tells. But right now, the discomfort he displayed actually amped Tony’s worry.

“Why not?” Because of all of them, Steve maintained that near hypocritical level of devotion to transparency, trust, and loyalty to friends. Then it hit him… “Oh…you had a thing for her.”

That got him a flinch.

“Huh.” Tony picked up his coffee and considered it before taking a long drink. “Well go you—did it get frisky? Not everyone can work with an ex-lover, and yes, I do speak from experience.” Though, to be fair, he and Pepper got along even better these days but that might be because she kept thousands of miles between them more often than not. What would it be like if she were working with the Avengers on a day-to-day basis? The idea had its merits, but… Yeah, probably better not to think about that, too closely.

It took him a beat to catch Steve’s frown and the hint of red on his ears. “No,” he told him. “We did not get frisky.”

“You know Red isn’t going to care,” he told him, because really maybe the guy needed to hear it. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a past. Hell, she had a present at the moment and frankly, just another reason to hate Barnes even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. That rage seemed to have all but abandoned him, and maybe that was for the better.

“It’s not about Nat—it’s…” Steve grimaced. “It’s the fact Sam set me up with her, thinking I needed a date. It’s the months and years of Nat pushing me at other women—hell she tried to set me up with Sharon before we knew who she was _and_ after. It’s…we’re still lying to people, and she’ll just be one more we have to lie to.”

“And?” because there was no way there wasn’t an and at the end of all of _that_.

“And I didn’t call her,” Steve admitted. “After Germany. I didn’t—call her. I didn’t even think about calling her when we were back and frankly, I don’t know if would ever have occurred to me.”

For a thoughtful guy like Cap, that had be to tantamount to Tony spitting in the face of one of his one-night stands—not that they hadn’t spit in his face, but Tony liked to think he was better than that. They had a good time, he had a good time, and he wholly respected them the next day even if he was pretty much over it before they were even out of the bed.

“Spit it out Cap, tell me what’s on your mind and I’m a vault. I’ll keep it and any comments on it to myself. Two minutes…go.” Turning on his seat, he faced Cap and gave him his whole attention.

“Not much to say—we never even got a cup of coffee, saw her at Peggy’s funeral, that’s where I found out she was Peggy’s niece. After the reception and stuff, Sam and I took her out to eat. We were heading back to the hotel when we got word of the explosion in Geneva…she gave us a ride over, and then a heads up on where Bucky might be and not even a five minute lead. Later—she let us hear the interrogation…and yeah I know she wasn’t supposed to and then…yeah, I called and asked her if she could get Sam’s wings, and the shield…and our gear.”

Most of this Tony could have pieced together, but he kept his mouth firmly shut and all editorials to himself. Because dinner with _Sam_ was not a date, and so far, he was getting strong acquaintance vibe, nothing that went anywhere near the uncomfortable territory he seemed to inhabit.

But when Steve just let it hang there, he said, “And?”

“And I kissed her,” Steve admitted with a pained look. “Told her it was about time and she said damn right, and then—that was it. Didn’t see her again.”

Tony didn’t laugh. He didn’t. It took everything in him to not laugh, so he didn’t even if his insides were shaking under the strain. “You feel guilty,” he said, damn proud his voice didn’t betray him.

“A little,” Steve admitted. “I’m not proud of how I treated her.”

“So you apologize,” he told him.

“I did,” Steve exhaled. “She seemed—fine with it. But I wasn’t all that thrilled to find out she was applying for the job as liaison and I might have suggested…”

This time, Tony had to lean his face into his hand to cover his mouth. Still another forty seconds on the clock.

“…she was doing it to just get close to me and I wasn’t…I wasn’t comfortable with it and worried about the message it would send.”

“Please tell me she kicked your ass,” Tony lifted his hand from his mouth briefly.

“Verbally—yeah.” The guy rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know whether I feel worse about the suggestion or the fact that I really don’t have a say in this.”

“Okay…let’s tackle this from the top and I’m going to admit that while my first impulse is to laugh at what might be…the most painful _not dating_ story ever, I’m not going to laugh cause logistically this could be a real mess for you. And specifically you because you’re—living with a woman who could arguably bury us all without breaking a sweat, and insulting a woman who has the training and the experience to make all of our lives very uncomfortable and just happens to be someone you didn’t actually date, but did make out with and remains the niece of the woman you were in love with…” The more he drew out the picture, the more pained Steve looked. “Do I have all of that right?”

With a sigh, Steve nodded. “More or less.”

“Come here,” Tony patted another stool. “Sit down and let Uncle Tony impart some wisdom about women to you…that may or may not save your life, but will make it a little easier.”

At Steve’s dubious look, Tony lifted his coffee mug. “Or you can keep winging it, but I think the only one in a better position to give you advice is likely the one person you’re not going to ask.”

Because Steve wasn’t going to lay this at Red’s feet. Guilt was eating him alive at the moment. At the moment, in the midst of all the unanswered questions and mysteries of their latest issues, this was something Tony could fix. The truth was, he could only open the door, Steve had to be the one who walked through it.

Finally, coffee mug in hand Steve crossed over to the worktable, and dropped onto the seat.

 

 

**Bucky**

A single gunshot ripped through the silent aftermath of Bucky’s entrance. He’d cleaned out the front three rooms, all targets down. The late hour, coupled with their overconfidence, meant he’d found most of the would be “guards” in various states of sleeping, drinking, or gaming. It was almost too easy.

He pushed through toward the central warehouse built between the houses. The heavy barricaded door gave him a moment’s pause before he knocked it inward. The smell hit him first—urine, sweat, and fear. Naked bulbs illuminated the rows of cages littered with mattresses and scattered amongst them were women, huddled together in the corners, trying to get as far away from the center aisle where he stood. Their weeping sobs and screams penetrated the soundless bubble around him. At the far end, he caught the sight of movement, and it was a single figure with a weapon raised, and Bucky sighted him, targeted, and fired. One bullet. The man dropped just as the door behind him opened, but the silhouette stepping through was one Bucky knew better than his own image.

She glanced down the aisle at him. “Get impatient?”

He shrugged. “He started it.”

But the crying around them demanded their attention. He motioned her to the cages while he continued a full sweep. Natalia soothed them in Spanish, and surprisingly, he understood the words. When one of the women asked him if he was there to save them, he said, “Yes, be quiet little sister. The widow is coming.”

He needed to focus. The last thing they needed was another armed man popping up with this many targets in the room. A little girl in one of the cages—couldn’t have been more than four, stared up at him with huge eyes out of a dirty face. The Soldier’s cool dispassion bled away under the very hot rage that struck him.

The men in the front had died far too quickly.

Only once he’d verified they had no more targets, and Natalia had been no less merciless than he with her own did he return. She had more than a third of the cages open. He moved to the opposite side and began to crack the metal gates with one hard pull of his left hand. The locks sheared away, and he was able to coax the women out. They’d separated most of them from the kids, but the women though wary of him, rushed free as soon as he cleared the doors.

Natalia was instructing them to go to the far end, nearer to where she entered. There was a sink there, and it looked like a bathroom.

One bathroom for all these women in their cages—images of Azzano assailed him, men crowded into cages, sleeping sitting up or leaning on each other, cold, exhausted, and uncertain of tomorrow.

These women were in the United Damn States. This shit shouldn’t be happening here.

What the hell had he fought a damn war for? Lost seventy years of his life to people worse than the fascists and in the meanwhile, _this_ happens?

“James,” Natalia’s voice drifted around him like a balm, pulling him out of the past’s icy grip. The Soldier pressed upward, slotting into place and he leaned on the man’s ability to compartmentalize. Bucky never thought he’d be so grateful for a skill that let him divorce himself from his surroundings.

“I’m all right,” he told her, and met her dark gaze. In those shadowed eyes beneath the dirty light of the low-wattage bulbs he saw hell reflected right back at him. The cold remoteness sheathing her after the meeting with Fury had been seared away, and he nodded. “Let’s get them out.”

He had no idea how they were going to transport all of these people—there had to be fifty or more. The weeping continued, but amidst the quiet sobs another sound stirred—gratitude, hope, and one he empathized with most closely, rage.

One of the women clung to Natalia as soon as she’d opened the gate. “Please,” she was saying. “They took my sister, they took her. Tonight—on the trucks. They came. They took her.”

Natalia soothed her as best she could, but the other women offered more details. A big truck had come. Many of the girls had been taken, the cages had been full, there was less than half left behind.

“We’ll find them,” she told the woman, and pressed her off into the hands of one of the others. Then with a glance at him, she said, “If they sent trucks to pick them up, there might be a radio or a transponder—something we can trace.”

He nodded and retreated toward the entrance he’d come through. There had been an office in the front house, one he’d ignored because there were no men in it.

Two steps from the door, there was a scream behind him, and he spun. Natalia had opened a cage, and a man erupted from behind the women in it and he’d lunged forward. Natalia barely got her arm up in time to block his downward swing. The light gleamed off the wicked blade in his hand. The Solder raised his weapon, he had a clean target—but Natalia wasn’t trying to kill him. She disarmed him instead, sending the blade skittering away.

But he had size and mass on her, and she didn’t have the angle for the best maneuver. He slammed her into the metal of the cage, but Bucky was already running. Natalia wanted him alive for questioning.

Fine.

He gripped the man’s arm and hauled him around. There was a sickening pop as he pulled his arm out of the socket. The man was lucky that only the knowledge he might bleed out kept Bucky from pulling the arm all the way off. Natalia shifted around him, and her foot slammed into the back of the guy’s knee, sending him crashing to the ground. She wrenched the guy’s arm, pinning it. Bucky had him by his dislocated shoulder.

“Bitch,” the guy spat at her. “You broke my arm.”

“It’s not broken,” Bucky informed him, then snapped his ulna. “That’s broken.”

His yells actually drowned out the women’s cries. Natalia sighed. Then nodded. “We don’t have time for this.”

With a slam, Bucky rammed his head into the metal cage and the man collapsed unconscious. Dragging him back inside, he relocked the gate after making sure no others were present.

“We’ll clear the rest _then_ I’ll check for radio transponders.” He wasn’t letting another ambush happen.

She nodded. There was a faint trickle of blood along the side of her neck, and he paused to turn her head gently. A narrow slice. The guy had nicked her with the blade. She was in no danger from it, but its presence annoyed him.

Thankfully she didn’t brush him off with an _I’m fine_ , instead, she’d pressed a hand to his arm. Then they parted, resuming their systematic emptying of the cells.

All told, they released sixty-eight prisoners, twenty-two of which were children under the age of thirteen. All of them spoke Spanish, and most seemed to be from regions in Central America. They’d come to the States on the promise of work, and education.

They needed more resources, and Natalia made a couple of calls. Ninety minutes after they took the building, Remy appeared with a crew of his own. He took one look at the place, and his expression went cold and remote as he looked at their single, wounded capture in his cage. “I’ll take care of it,” he promised Natalia, then headed toward the huddled women and children, his demeanor and smooth charm seemed to relax them, along with the fact most of the crew he brought with him were also women.

In the office, Bucky located their CB radio set up along with transport paperwork for the trucks—they were listed as livestock transports.

Bucky hadn’t thought he could be angrier.

 

 

**Steve**

 

 

The last person he expected to understand was Tony. He was used to the other man ribbing him, poking at him sometimes in good fun, sometimes more acerbically. None of that was present as Tony said, “Women want to be seen and acknowledged for who they are, not just for a great ass or a fabulous pair of breasts.”

Not that the way Tony discussed it was always comfortable.

“You’re not a T&A guy, you never have been as far as I can tell,” Tony continued, tinkering with something on his work table—a gauntlet from the look of it. Somehow, having Tony’s attention directed somewhere else made the conversation easier. “But you’re still a guy and we notice these things. We notice beauty and kindness, and depending on how we were raised, we accept that some things are certainties—opening a door for a woman, picking up the check, noticing her shoes.”

“Her shoes?” Steve frowned.

Tony paused and looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Steve—always notice the shoes. Just—just go with it.”

A little bewildered by what that had to do with the situation, he nodded.

“Here’s the thing—gender roles in our society are pretty messed up. Women get put into two categories—virgin and whore. Wholly unfair, and way too religious for my taste, but everything from marketing to social expectations lands squarely in those two categories—men who enjoy sex are rogues, scoundrels, and bad boys—but absolutely acceptable. Women, who do, are whores, harlots, and prostitutes and shouldn’t be worth crossing the street to put them out if they were on fire.”

“That’s—a horrific comparison.”

“And yet—in the seventy years you were in the ice it became the basic bedrock foundation of our society. Women got the right to vote when you were what, three, four, Rogers? That’s less than a hundred years ago. It wasn’t until the late seventies or early eighties, women could even take out loans in their own names, buy a car, or get a credit card without their husband’s name on it. And if they were single? Well whoo boy, what is wrong with you honey that you can’t get a man?” The absolute scorn in that statement made Tony’s sentiment abundantly clear.

He couldn’t dispute the truth of it. Peggy had to prove herself repeatedly and it didn’t matter how skilled she was or how brilliant, most of the guys around him only ever saw the great gams, and the beautiful pouty red lips. Not that Steve _hadn’t_ noticed them, but she was—kind, and smart as hell—and funny. It was easier for him to notice those things too because a woman that beautiful was never going to have the time of day for him.

And that hit him like a stone to the back of the head. He’d judged her not interested based on her beauty alone and what a hard lump that was to swallow.

“So—women, no matter how smart, how talented, how _inventive_ or how much _better_ they could be than any one else around them, are constantly measured by whether they have a penis or can get one.”

Steve winced. “Tony…doesn’t that kind of boil women back down to your whore…” He hated that word. “And virgin argument?”

“Yes. Look at Red—you know anyone more capable?” Flat question, no sarcasm.

“No.”

“Do you know what the papers always focused on where she was concerned?”

He did and he hated that, too.

“So—you see my point. Now enter Sharon Carter. She’s the niece of a woman you revered, which probably put her in the position of having to hear about how awesome you were as much as I had to hear it. Trust me when I say, no one wants someone else’s perfection thrown in their face on a regular basis.”

God he hoped not. He didn’t think Peggy would have done that to anyone…then he thought back to her interview he watched at the Smithsonian… _“Even gone all that time, Steve was still changing my life…”_

“She had a job to do—a job that put her in the position of having to lie to you. Now she doesn’t owe you anything. You aren’t her friend. You aren’t even an acquaintance. You’re someone she heard lots of stories about. Maybe she thinks you’re cute,” Tony shrugged off the last words. “No accounting for taste. But then she’s outted—and you are pissed because you feel betrayed—this woman you respected, your neighbor, she’s not the virgin, she’s the whore.”

“Tony…”

“Not literally, Steve. She just went from being the “right” kind of girl, to the “wrong” kind. When guys do that—well, we shrug it off. We don’t really expect guys to be anything for us.” Tony fixed him with a look. “Even when they’re supposed to be our friends and they betray us. It costs, but we don’t really _lose_ anything. When a woman does it though, we have a _lost_ opportunity, even if it wasn’t ours to begin with.”

“I really hate these descriptions.”

“Truth hurts,” Tony set the gauntlet aside and turned sideways to face him. “My mom was a lot of things, she was kind, generous, and gifted. She was always thinking of who she could help, and what more she could do. The only place in her life she was absolutely selfish was my dad, she treasured their time together and refused to let him ever blow her off for his work. She'd go with him and did, a lot, but she wouldn't surrender what was hers. And sometimes—I don’t get how a prick like him got so lucky with a woman like her. Trust me—he did _not_ deserve her.”

The Howard Steve had known had been a rake, but he’d had a good heart even if his brain often outpaced his compassion. Tony was a lot like him, but Steve wouldn’t draw that comparison because in the end—Steve hadn’t known the man as long as he might have wished and he’d never had to deal with him twenty-five years after the fact, when he was older and far more set in his ways.

“But Mom loved him…she would do anything for him, _except_ let him get away with being a dick.” Tony’s grin grew. “Dad knew better than to cross her there, too. The one piece of advice he gave me where women were concerned was that every woman deserved to be treated the way we treated Mom. With respect, affection, and attention. He’d say the only reason a woman ever had to lower herself was because men couldn’t be bothered to raise their eyes.”

That—actually sounded like Howard.

“You’re a great guy, Steve. You like to do the right thing, you open doors for the ladies, you say ma’am, and you’re respectful. But you kissed a girl because she was _there_ , and then you didn’t call or give her any respect for the loyalty her actions _proved_ to you, because you were uncomfortable with how you felt about her _after_ the kiss—or maybe because of Red. The point is—you took your feelings on the subject and made it more important than the _person_ involved.”

He scratched at his beard, because he couldn’t argue it. That wasn’t his intention—ever. But yeah…

“And now you’re worried she’s gonna be around, and you’re going to have to face her…disappointment? Or her…longing? Whatever emotion you're ascribing to her, rather than just saying, okay—you kissed her. It didn’t mean anything in the long run, sorry I’m a dick that I didn’t call. Let’s see how we can make this work professionally?”

“I got there,” Steve admitted. “Not—quite the way you’re describing. But I got there.”

“If Red broke up with you tomorrow,” Tony said, no trace of emotion in his voice. “If she turned you down or just put you in the friend zone, could you still work with her?”

He wanted to say yes, at the same time—he wanted to be honest. “I don’t know—but it wouldn’t be because of her.” When Nat told him she worried about who Bucky was to her, what it could mean, and that she didn’t want to hurt him—he’d been truthful. He could handle it, he just didn’t want to miss an opportunity because he waited too long. She was worth it.

Weeks later, God was she still worth it. Keeping it honest, and talking, even about the parts that stung—that helped. He wouldn’t trade it in the slightest. But if she eventually decided that she didn’t want to be in this with him anymore?

“She’s not just any woman,” he said. “It’s different from Sharon…it’s different from assuming Sharon was doing that because of some implied promise that I wasn’t intending to keep even if I never meant to make that kind of promise. And I shouldn’t have been assuming.” Nothing with Nat was an assumption.

“But you respect the hell out of Red, and you want her in your life—whether she’s with you or not.” It wasn’t a question. Steve suddenly had the idea they weren’t just talking about him anymore.

“Yes.”

“You’d find a way to make it work for you, so you could both be comfortable?”

He nodded.

“Then if you can do that for someone who means everything, where losing it hurts more than breathing—you can do it for anyone, because it costs you nothing and that respect is worth far more to them than some illusion you think they may or may not want.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Steve studied him.

“We’re being pretty damn intimate at the moment Cap, and we’re not drunk—so if there was a time for a personal question, now would be it.” The flip answer didn’t detract from the blunt honesty.

“Is that how you handled it with Pepper?”

Tony considered it for a long moment, then said, “Pepper and I are still able to be friends because she forgave me. I didn’t have a lot I needed to forgive. I was definitely the problem in that relationship.” The level of self-aware was the thing about Tony most people missed, and the one aspect of him that reminded Steve of how truly human he was below the genius. “But I want her in my life however I can have her, so…yeah. I guess it is.”

“But you still miss her.”

He lifted his shoulders, and then drained his coffee cup. “Doesn’t really matter what I want—never has seemed to matter. So I make the best of what I have…”

“Was it because of Nat?” Because, since he was being honest, that part actually worried him. Not that Tony was interested, no—he didn’t like that, but he had to find a way to—how had Tony put it?—respect it.

Meeting his gaze, Tony didn’t flinch away. “Nope. Didn’t even realize my feelings for Red had changed until after Pepper and I weren’t a thing. Maybe it’s not a love for the ages—I don’t know if I’m that guy. But who knows, Dad got lucky. Maybe I will, too. Someday.”

“I know you will,” he assured him, because he did believe that. “You’ve got a lot to offer.”

Tony laughed. “All this and a billion bucks in the bank, too. What woman wouldn’t want a red hot mess like this? I mean, seriously?” Grin firmly in place, he stood. “You going to be able to handle Carter as our liaison? Cause honestly—we could use the help. She isn’t Red, but she’s still smart and capable of running interference.”

“She’s not a replacement for Nat.”

“Hell no,” Tony scoffed. “That would be asinine, but she can be a damn useful ally and asset on our side and another buffer against the Committee. It’s going to take months to get the revised Accords in place, if we can insulate further against them—against all the different government agencies—and _we_ aren’t the ones saying no…that’s good for all of us. Including Red.”

“I’m not following on that one,” Steve said, shaking his head slowly.

“And this is why I’m the genius and you’re the poster boy,” Tony said slowly. “Carter is going to get a front row seat at the team dynamic, she’s going to see the cracks—the places we’re still struggling, and the holes we need to fill. There’s a great big gaping hole in the team…her job is to liaise, to make our lives easier and our jobs simpler to do.”

“You think she can advocate for Nat.”

“Hey—she has no skin in that game, especially if she’s really not interested in you—then her being the one to help us push for Red’s reinstatement could work.” He didn’t sound super confidant. “Might not. But can’t hurt in the long run.”

“Doesn’t that kind of fly in the face of the whole treat women like they’re people and not about fulfilling our own needs?” Which, Steve was pretty damn sure he had a handle on, even if he managed to flub it now and again.

“Oh hell no.” Tony smirked. “We need Red. I wholeheartedly respect Carter’s ability to be intelligent enough to see it. If she doesn’t….then that lack of intelligence is on her, now isn’t it?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Steve said, not wanting to put that kind of pressure on Sharon. Just—he’d already asked a lot of her and that was enough. Respect her to do her job. He could do that. He’d finished his coffee sometime during the discussion though he barely remembered drinking it. Glancing at the displays, he said, “Anything here I need to know about?”

“Getting there,” Tony said swiveling to face them. “Red got us in the door with Roxxon’s systems. In a few hours, I’m going to know everything about them and what they’re doing.”

That was definitely something.

 

 

**Natasha**

It was mid-morning before they made it back to the safe house. Every muscle in her body hurt, and her insides were just—raw. They’d lost three of the women; stray shots for two, and a third had apparently suffocated or maybe just died form the horror of it all.

They’d caught the truck in Mississippi. Freed the women, and managed to keep two of the handlers alive. One had been spilling before James even restrained him. She’d had one of the women call Beaumont from a burner phone. She and James lingered long enough to see the first members of law enforcement arrive before they’d slipped away. Remy took care of the women back in New Orleans. Beaumont would handle these.

Among the items in the truck—cell phones with calls logging to Montague’s phones. It was enough for Beaumont to pick him up.

If not, then fine, she’d deal with it herself.

After about twenty hours of sleep. James had been quiet, but she’d seen the rage in his eyes when he’d seen the cages, and the women. It wasn’t the Red Room—but in some ways it was so much worse.

At least the Red Room had been for a purpose. The fact that sick thought could crawl out of the bowels of her mind left her dirtier than their long night. Inside, they moved in tandem. She started water boiling for tea. He took possession of their weapons—hers included.

She stripped out of her gear, and he his. While she checked for damage and cleaned it, he went through the guns, and knives. Emptying and cleaning them with precision before storing them along with the tact gear when she finished. Tea in hand, she pulled out bread and peanut butter. The sandwiches weren’t fancy, but they were filling and loaded with protein.

The fog in her brain needed it.

In the bathroom, they rinsed off in the shower, and washed their hair. Everything was perfunctory, just going through the motions. After, she went to make more tea because she barely remembered what hers tasted like. James had drunk all of his. There was something…comforting about these motions. A sense of repetition. Maybe they’d done this before? A dozen times? A hundred? Who knew?

The Red Room and its so called lofty purposes.

She’d barely poured the hot water over the tea bags when James appeared and he pulled her back into the bathroom, and pointed her at the full tub with—vanilla scented bubble bath.

At her raised eyebrow, he picked her up and then set her in the tub of hot water which wrapped around the ice in her soul like a blanket. “Stay.”

Well, she got a syllable out of him. Then he slipped out and she watched his naked ass walk away. There was something about he tense way his muscles rippled with every step. But even that wasn’t enough to stir more than a passing sense of admiration.

She was just…numb.

The disconnect between her and everything around her had been like a low staticky hum—if she weren’t so cognizant, she’d almost have thought she’d been triggered. But it wasn’t that. She just—there was a glass wall between her and the rest of the world. She could act, affect, and complete the mission but she didn’t feel anything.

She’d brushed the eyes closed on those dead women, and nothing.

They hadn’t gotten to them in time.

Everyone died alone.

Even when they were surrounded.

James reappeared with a pair of steaming mugs and he set them on the edge where she could reach it, and then motioned her forward. When he slid into the water behind her, it took a moment to adjust and for her to slide between his legs and back. The tub wasn’t quite big enough for this, but they made it work.

Settling against his chest with her tea cradled in her hands, she stared at the tips of her toes peeking up through the water. She was most of the way through her tea before the glass walls began to shudder, and crack. “Did you call Steve?”

“I waited for you,” he said, and his voice warmed a fraction from the frost kissed tone he’d had when he ordered her into the water.

Tipping her head back, she looked up at him. “Are you okay?”

His gaze dipped to meet hers, and a faint smile touched his lips. “Better now.”

Yeah.

She got that.

“We’ll know in a few hours…”

“Know what?” He traced a pattern against her shoulder, a light one—just letting her know he was there.

“If we’re done.”

“Good.” Then… “Tell Steve about Fury.”

She sighed. She didn’t want to even think about Nick… “I know.”

“Good,” he repeated, and then he wrapped his arms around her. “The water is getting cool.”

“A little longer?”

“Okay.”

She closed her eyes. “I really wanted to save all of them.”

His voice was a whisper at her ear. “Me, too.”


	28. Flashback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers...

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

**Flashback**

**Bucky**

_“Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?”_

_“Bucky! Hang on! Grab my hand! No!”_

_“Sergeant Barnes…you’re to be the new fist of Hydra…”_

_“You will be training with me. They will not touch you.”_

_“You call me Soldat.”_

_“Come to watch me dance again?”_

_“Shift the movement—you can leap powerfully, but if you shift it—you will put all that force into the strike of your foot.”_

_“You are injured.”_

_“Widow.”_

_“Soldat.”_

_“Put him in the chair.”_

_“You called me Natalia…”_

_“What did you do wrong?”_

_“You called me Soldat…”_

_“That is not a name.”_

_“I do not have a name.”_

_“Widow.”_

_“I will need to be inside…when you make the shot.”_

_“I have to be there when they pull everyone into the bunker…”_

_“You have to shoot him_ through _me.”_

_“James…”_

_“That is not my name.”_

_“Yes…it is. I found it. Your name is James.”_

_“Widow.”_

_“You called me Natalia.”_

_“Your designation is Widow.”_

_“Yours is Soldat…but I call you James.”_

_“Natalia…”_

_“Bring her. Now.”_

_“She has…”_

_“I did not give you leave to speak Asset. Bring the Widow. We have an assignment for her.”_

_“I called you Natalia.”_

_“That’s my name?”_

_“Yes, Natalia. You call me James…”_

_“James…oh…they did it again, didn’t they?”_

_“Yes, Natalia—but I found you.”_

_“Welcome to the 70s, Soldat.”_

_“The 70s?”_

_“You have slept a long time…”_

_“I must have been weary.”_

_“Perhaps…I am going to call you James.”_

_“That is not my designation.”_

_“No, my darling—it is your name. I held onto it for you.”_

_“I—I did not hold on to yours…oh. Natalia.”_

_“James…I’m leaving.”_

_“What?”_

_“I have to…I want you to go with me.”_

_“Natalia…”_

_“No, listen. If we stay—if they find out…I can’t let this happen—I can’t let them have it. I can’t. I’ll die first.”_

_“You will_ not _die.”_

_“Then come with us.”_

_“They will hunt us.”_

_“Let them. We can be_ free _. Even if only for a little while.”_

_Stunning blue skies. Cool air. Beautiful green trees. No people. Anywhere._

_“How much longer?”_

_“A month? Perhaps? I don’t know. They trained me for everything but this…”_

_“You are beautiful, Natalia.”_

_“I am slow, and ungainly. If they catch us now, I will be useless in the fight.”_

_“They will not catch you…I promise.”_

_“Natalia…”_

_“It’s time…it’s…time…”_

_“Breathe, Natalia.”_

_“I am breathing…is that supposed to help?”_

_“It is what the book said.”_

_She laughed…and it eased his fear._

_When the baby let loose with her first cry, his world shifted._

_“They’re coming.”_

_“What…”_

_“I saw them on the road. A full team. They’re coming Natalia…we must have slipped. Take her and go.”_

_“I am_ not _leaving you.”_

_“You can and you will…take her.”_

_“Fine I will…”_

_“No…tell me nothing. Just go, my love. Go and take her and be free.”_

_“But how will you find us?”_

_“I will. But I cannot know where you are going.” He dared not ever betray them._

_“James…”_

_“Go.”_

_“Soldat.”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

_“You will bring us the Widow.”_

_“Do you have a location?”_

_“No, Soldat. You will have to hunt her.”_

_“Parameters?”_

_“Alive, Soldat. Break every bone in her body if you have to, but bring her back alive.”_

_“Mission report, Soldat?”_

_“The hunt continues. She has left the United States.”_

_“Proceed.”_

_“Mission report, Soldat?”_

_“The hunt continues. She has been seen in Shanghai.”_

_“Proceed.”_

_“Mission report, Soldat?”_

_“The hunt has narrowed, she has settled in a villa on the Amalfi Coast.”_

_“Proceed.”_

_“Mission report, Soldat?”_

_“The Widow is in custody.”_

_“Her status?”_

_“Broken.”_

_“Bring her in.”_

_“Asset, you will be working with a partner for this mission, code name Black Widow.”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

“ _No_ , Lyonya... _. You don’t need to do it_. _Please don’t!_ ” _She should never beg. Never have to beg. The drugs held him absolutely still, barricaded in his mind even as he slammed his fists against it._

“ _Soldat!”_

_“Malen’kiy pauk!” They were taking her away._

_Again._

_“Wipe him, fools!”_

_Then… “Do not be so sad, you are next.”_

_“Put her in the chair. Now wait…she should see the rest.”_

_“Ready to comply.” The air around him was cold. They’d stripped him down to skin before putting him in the tank. The woman in the chair stared. Something about those green eyes pulled at him—a demand, a plea._

_“Do you finally see, Natalia? You? He? You are nothing but tools for Mother Russia. You were supposed to be the greatest of us, and all you are is his whore—so look well Widow. This is the very last time you will see him.”_

_The woman surged out of the chair—there was blood. The one in front of her—the one taunting her. He was down. Bleeding._

_All of this he watched from behind a curtain, uncertain of why it mattered but knowing he had to watch. He had to see every moment. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen…and she was coming for him._

_Two more went down._

_Then another._

_And another._

_Gun fire._

_Yelling._

_Another sharp crunch of a bone._

_Then she was in front of him, reaching out to touch his face… and pain sparked across her eyes as her whole body went stiff._

_Again._

_Then again._

_And finally she collapsed._

_The bleeding man struck her again._

_“Put her in the chair—wipe her until she drools.” Then he glanced at the Soldier. “And put him on ice…” He spat blood to the side, and gripped his torso. He was losing a lot of blood. Then his knees were collapsing medical was rushing to assist him._

_The beautiful red head was dropped into the chair. The Soldier waited for those green eyes to open. Just once more. He wanted to see her eyes again. To remember them._

_He had to remember._

_Then he was cold…and her red hair the last thing he saw._

Bucky sat up, every bone in his body vibrated as heat rushed through his veins. His head ached, and his hands…he looked at his hands. They’d been covered in blood. _Her_ blood. Jerking his gaze to the right, he swallowed. The bed was empty.

And cold.

Sunlight filtered through the curtained windows—it was still daytime. Slipping out of the bed, he categorized the room. The safe house. They were still in Louisiana.

 _They_ were still here.

When he’d gone to sleep, she’d been curled at his side, her fingers spread over his heart.

Stalking out of the bedroom, he halted in the little living room. She stood in front of the windows, wearing nothing, her arms folded as she stared into the distance. Bucky could breathe.

She was there.

Not writhing in pain.

Not broken.

Not in tears.

Not alone.

Not…not about to be wiped in the chair as he faded into cold oblivion, her memory stripped away.

Bile burned in the back of his throat and hate surged through him so palpable, he couldn’t breathe for it. He’d gotten to kill Leonid—finally. But he hadn’t realized even then how much that bastard needed to die. 1984.

A shift of weight, a floorboard’s soft creak, and he found Natalia staring at him curiously. “James?”

_“I call you James…it’s your name. I found it.”_

She’d found his name all those years ago and given it to him, again and again, and again. How many times had they held onto slivers of themselves, grasping them tight to feed them back to the other, to lure their memories out of hiding.

When he couldn’t remember her, she’d remembered for him.

When she lost him, he’d found her for them.

Then they’d been torn apart…and he…

Without thinking, he strode across the room and wrapped his arms around her. Pulling her back to his chest, he buried his face in her hair. One arm around her middle, and the other across her breasts, he just held her close. She stroked his arm, melting back against him and letting him wrap her tight.

“Natalia,” he whispered in a hoarse voice.

“I’m here,” she promised. “I had a bad dream…and I didn’t want to wake you.”

A bad dream. That could sum up their whole life. One long, terrifically horrible dream interspersed with moments of astounding color and depth and definition. When he’d told Steve she’d been what reminded him to be human—he’d lost his humanity the day they took her. When they put him in the ice, it was the last time he’d seen her until DC.

“James, you’re shaking.” She pressed back against him, but even when she tried to twist to face him, he didn’t let her go. He couldn’t bear the thought of releasing her. No. If he did…this moment might slip away.

Lips against her throat, he kissed a path to her jaw and she tilted her head back, resting all of her weight on him. She was so light, it belied every ounce of strength she housed in her slight body. “Mine,” he whispered against her jaw. “You were mine and they kept taking you.”

“Shh,” she murmured, gliding her palm over his arm. “I’m here, James. No one is taking me.”

Another shudder passed through him, and she twisted against him, just enough to angle her head so she could look up at him and then he loosened his arms to turn her, and sliding a hand into her hair, held her head still so he could brush his lips across hers. He’d meant it to be a light touch, but he fell into the kiss sealing his mouth over hers, stealing away her breath and sucking deeply against her tongue until she relented and thrust it against his.

The tangle of her fingers in his hair sent pleasure sparking through him. She fisted his hair, holding onto him as desperately as he clung to her. It was like kissing her for the first time—he’d finally cracked through the damn ice and found those green eyes and red hair. His little spider. The dancing ballerina. He’d never truly forgotten her. God they’d tried to take her, again and again. They’d barraged his mind with electricity and drugs and pain.

They’d stripped him of his identity, ripped flesh from his bones, spilled his blood, and tried to excavate his soul—and they couldn’t get her out fully. She was too deep inside of him, where she belonged. With him. One arm around her waist, he lifted her clean off the ground, and then her thighs locked on his hips as she balanced herself. The position lifted her higher, and it was her mouth coming down on his, her hands pulling his head back—it left him curiously vulnerable and open to her.

She could slit his throat.

She could disembowel him.

She had the leverage with her hands in his hair and his balance wholly focused on hers and keeping her skin in contact with his.

She could break his neck.

It was glorious.

He swung her around and took a couple of long strides back to the bedroom. The quaint little house, tucked away in the trees, dappled in sunlight, and surrounded by damp, humid air the air conditioner had to fight to keep out. A haven, a sanctuary—the latest in a long litany of hidden spaces where they could safely fall into each other’s arms.

Depositing her on the bed with exquisite care, he didn’t let up on the kiss. He could kiss her for hours, suck on her lower lip, tease her tongue, and drink in her taste and her scent. She smelled like vanilla, and a hint of citrus. Beneath it all was the warm flame that kept the Siberian cold at bay. The poetry didn’t belong to him, it was the Soldier’s but he glided a hand down her side even as he braced himself on one arm. They remembered everything about her, every curve, every tilt of her chin, and every simmering look which could come alive in her green eyes.

Red hair.

Green eyes.

His ballerina.

His little spider.

Deadly. Beautiful. Brilliant.

When she fisted his hair and tugged once, he lifted his head breaking the kiss and hungry to return. She gazed up at him, those unfathomable eyes so full of questions and heat.

“Soldat,” she whispered it like it was a revelation and then, “James.” Both names sent electric shocks through his system. Pleasant ones. Igniting half-forgotten dreams and slips of memory.

He was both.

He’d _always_ been both for her.

“Widow,” he teased the word with a trace of his finger along the curve of her breast. Her skin was like the finest silk, soft and warm and perfect. The pucker of her nipple tightening into a hard bud drew his attention, and he circled it gently not quite giving her the pressure she wanted. “My Natalia.”

 _Mine_.

The word stamped somewhere deep, so far below the surface it could never be erased. The darkness in her eyes drifted away, leaving her unguarded and open. The armor they wore to keep the world out had never been necessary between them and it prickled whenever it came into play. They’d been fighting their way back—they’d always had to fight and claw their way back.

“Natalia,” he repeated it like fucking prayer, reverent and loaded with every conviction. She tugged once and it was all he needed. He dropped his weight down and their lips fused together again. Nothing else mattered but this…he’d woken again—finally. Woken to his Natalia and she was there, and he had her. No more wondering. No more…

A laugh bubbled out of her and he paused to marvel at the sound of it. Lifting his head to study her flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and swollen, pink lips. She glided her tongue over the lower one, and it glistened. He tracked the motion with a hunger he couldn’t comprehend, it consumed all of him and longed to consume her and yet he wanted to give her everything in the same breath.

“What?” He asked after searching for the word he needed.

“I think I just came,” she told him, her eyes widening as she ran her hands over his shoulders and then down his back. She never avoided his left arm. Her light fingers caressed the twisted and mottled skin. It was ugly, a horrible testament to everything he’d experienced. “ _It means you’re alive, Soldat. You lived. You’re here with me…and for that alone they are beautiful.”_

“You’re beautiful.” Her whispers from the present collided with the past. A slow smile spread across her face. “So gorgeous, I think I came just from kissing you.”

“Not yet,” he promised, a sly grin of his own coming into play. The Soldier settled within him. Bucky Barnes slotted into place. But it was James—his two halves locked where they belonged, who dipped his head toward her neck. “But you will,” he promised her. Then he kissed his way to her shoulder, and paused to nuzzle the scar on her left shoulder.

His mark. He’d done that.

Then another, a sliver of one so fine it was barely noticeable where it stretched along the curve of her breast. He’d done that one, too. A glancing blow in a fight. Against her exposed nipple, he breathed and grinned when her thighs clenched him tighter and she shifted her balance. Dropping a hand to her hip, he pinned her to the bed.

She wasn’t flipping them over. Not now. Not when he hadn’t had a chance to play. Cupping her breast with his right hand, he rolled the nipple and focused on her face. With every teasing stroke of his thumb, every light squeeze, he studied her to see which elicited the most pleasure, what could make her gasp, or what sent her pupils dilating. Light pressure, firm pinches, teasing rolls—they all did something different. When he locked his lips around her neglected nipple, her whole back arched as a pleased moan escaped her.

He could do this all day.

But he had other plans, too. After time spent in wonder, teasing each of her breasts, he kissed a path down her abdomen and froze briefly against the flat plane of her tummy. A memory flared to life, the tautness of the gentle bump expanding the tightly corded muscles of her abdomen. A fantasy—one he would kill to give her back. One they’d robbed her of before he’d truly even gotten to know her. And yet…

She shifted restlessly beneath his hands, her fingers in his hair and pulling at him, but he caught her wrist, before kissing the scar on her abdomen.

Shooting through her.

Fuck—it wasn’t the first time.

He dragged his kiss lower, and eased between her already spread thighs. Kissing her cunt, teasing at her labia, and then sucking on her clit could keep him there for hours. Easing a finger into her slick channel, he smiled at her fist thumping the bed even as she arched her hips in an effort to make him add more pressure—but he wanted to remember, every little sound he could wring out of her, how many fingers could he slip into her and when he shifted to use his left hand, she came with a sharp cry.

His little spider enjoyed the cool metal against her skin and he savored her reaction, then resumed his teasing. He wanted to build her to another orgasm, licking, nipping, tasting every sweet drop of her release. After dragging his index finger through the slick, he eased it beneath her and teased the puckered ring of muscle at her anus. Above, she stiffened and he relaxed the touch and then looked up across the sweet plane of her body to meet her gaze.

“May I?” he asked, teasing his breath against her clit. The pulsing, swollen button of flesh beckoned his lips but he wanted—more.

He wanted everything. Every single facet…

A catch in her breath, then a slight nod and he pressed his finger back to the tight ring, and eased past it even as he locked his lips on her clit and sucked fiercely. Her body bucked under his, her thighs locking on his shoulders and he groaned at the reaction and worked his finger deeper into her ass.

Had they done that? Had she let him have her there? And she rippled above him, hips rolling, as her cunt fluttered and he curved his metal fingers inside of her. Hot spikes drove through him, images of beds, of closets, and even cars—stolen moments where they couldn’t even take off their clothes, and long, indulgent dangerous days when they never bothered to put them on.

He ramped up the intensity, wanting—no needing—her to come again. When she shuddered and spasmed through a second orgasm, he lifted his head to gaze up at her. His mouth was wet with the taste of her and his fingers damp.

“James…”

He eased his hands from her, and then wiped them on the sheet before he gripped her hips, and flipped her over. The curve of her ass teased him, and he eased his palm along her spine. “Is this all right?” Manhandling her if she let him was fine, but he wasn’t taking a damn thing she didn’t give him.

“Yes,” she exhaled, and then glanced over her shoulder at him as she tilted her hips and then wiggled her ass. “Like something you see?” The teasing remark dragged him forward with a laugh and he leaned over her to kiss that smart mouth.

“I adore everything I see.” Then he tangled his tongue with hers as he fisted himself once, then twice. Hard enough to send a spark of pain up his spine. He wasn’t going to come as soon as he slammed into her. His hair trigger hadn’t eased since that first time in the shower. Might be years before he stopped coming just from sliding home, but he wanted to make this last—for her, for him—for them.

He took his time teasing his length against her cunt, slicking himself up before easing inside of her and he took his time, inching in as he trailed kisses over her shoulders and slid his hands down to settle on her hips. His whole body laser focused on where he joined hers and he looked down, tracing the way she took him inside her like it was where he belonged.

“Fuck yes,” she whispered, and he grinned. It was a stupid, silly smile, and it stretched his whole face. A nudge forward, then another and the hot, wet heat enveloped him and he had to lean his head back and look away from the elegant lines of her back or all his efforts would have been wasted. Slowing, he tried to catch his breath and gather his self control and then she pushed back, taking him to the hilt and in a single movement she shattered nearly all of his restraint.

Satisfaction and pure need collided. His grip on her was too tight, he was going to leave bruises, but she pulled away a fraction and then drove back. The movement jerked him out of his stupor. “Yes?” He demanded—he had to know. Had to know it wouldn’t hurt her—that it was what she wanted.

“Yes, dammit…James—the answer is always yes.” She pounded a hand against the bed, frustrated with his need to know. His darling Natalia never cared if it hurt her, but he always would. Would always need to know. She would always have her say. “Move, please…”

It was all he needed to hear and then he fucked into her hard, and fast. His skin slapped against hers and the sound played out the beat of his heart as he thrust. Every part of his body focused on hers, on joining her again, and again, and his control shredded even as white hot heat unfolded down his spine. His balls dragged up tight, and he stretched beneath her, dragging his fingers over where they joined and then found her clit by some miracle.

One stroke. Two…and then she spasmed around him even as he danced along the line of pleasure and pain before it all melted away and he came. The shock of it held him rigid, and he wasn’t sure which of them let out the shout or maybe it was both. When she collapsed beneath him, he eased down along her back, careful to keep from crushing her, and then he rolled them onto their sides and kept her close, he hadn’t slipped free yet and he wanted to stay there forever.

Wrecked.

Destroyed.

Together.

They lay there for hours, he stirred only long enough to use the restroom and then returned with a damp cloth to ease over her. She might have slept, but he didn’t. Refusing to look away, not even once from her. The idea she might disappear or slip away haunted him.

Sometime around sunset, her phone rang and she groaned but pushed out of the bed. He tracked her movement across the room to where she plucked the offensive object up, and answered it.

“Hey Isaiah,” she said, a deliberate choice and she looked over at him. Her face was still reddened, as were her breasts. Marked from his stubble. He should have shaved. But her lazy smile warmed him, and she mimed going to the living room. Though he was loathe for her to leave, he nodded. Then lay there on the bed to give her privacy.

Running a hand over his face, he turned his mind back to the dream. Memories? So many pieces he’d had slotted into place like they belonged.

Years.

He and Natalia had been together for years. Wiped. Reprogrammed. Reassigned. But they always found each other.

Until the last time.

Some creative bastard decided to separate them permanently.

1984.

Italy.

They’d been on a mission there, and they’d wiped them both. Him first, and then into cryo. She’d fought so fucking hard to get to him, to save him and he’d just _sat_ there, unable to do anything but watch. Then the cold came, and the curtain dropped. The Soldier had been alone when he woke.

Bucky—James—the rest of him, stayed buried in the ice. There was no fire to warm them to life. The Soldier had gone on. There was always another mission.

1984.

Thirty years stolen away from them after decades.

Fucking bastards.

The only comfort he had was every single one of the bastards was dead. Some at his hands. Some at hers. And some at the enemy of all of them—time. It was cold comfort except…

The sound of the electric kettle clicked on, and her voice was a low hum—amusement maybe. Whatever Isaiah was telling her was good news. He didn’t try to focus on the words, he could hear them if he really wanted to, but she would tell him what he needed to know. Good news.

They could go back to New York. To the Tower. To see Steve.

Something fisted in his gut and he breathed around it. Steve…and Natalia were another fact. Another change. He’d already accepted it, but he had to reacclimatize. He’d accepted them before he’d _remembered_. But it was Steve, and he’d been there for Natalia when James couldn’t be there. He’d been there when the Soldier had been on ice, and Bucky a half-forgotten pipe dream.

He’d been there to save her when the Soldier would have had to kill her.

He’d been there to pull the Soldier—and thus Bucky and James out. They wouldn’t have their lives back without him. They wouldn’t have any of this without him.

He belonged—to Bucky, his best friend and to Natalia—however the hell she wanted him.

She deserved it after…

He sat up abruptly. After…

Was that a fantasy or a reality? They’d run. They’d escaped—for months. Because they’d had to…they had to stay away and he’d let them take him to keep her safe, to keep _them_ safe.

Fuck…

Fuck…

“James?”

He jerked his gaze to the door where she smiled at him. “Isaiah said Beaumont got them—Montague, his network—his buyers. All of them…and he has enough to sink teeth into more.”

How the fuck did he tell her this? “That’s…good.”

No way she knew. No way she remembered. It was impossible. They’d taken even that from her—but had they taken…

“I’m going to call Tony about the plane—we’ll have to head back to his place in the Garden District.” The shadows from the morning were still there, but they weren’t as dark. And the smile on her lips… “Want to get some gumbo to try before we go?” The hopeful note tugged at him.

“Anything you want,” he told her. No. She didn’t know.

Fuck. He couldn’t tell her this.

He couldn’t.

“Anything?” She teased.

“Anything.”

“Hmm…that’s a lot of wiggle room.” Then she laughed. “Coffee will be ready in a few. Do you want to shower first or me?”

“Go ahead, zvezda moya,” he murmured. “I’d join you…”

“But then we’d never get out of here.” She winked as she strolled around the bed, swaying her hips in clear invitation. The bruises left by his fingers still visible, even if they were already fading. “If Steve were here…that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

No. If Steve were here it wouldn’t be. “Now you see why he wants a place of our own,” he murmured and she paused at the door, then look back at him. “I’m not pushing,” he promised her. _No, I’m lying. I’m not telling her what I know._

“I know,” she murmured. “And maybe he has a point…”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear it.”

Natalia crossed her eyes, then stuck out her tongue at him. It was so ridiculously playful, he grinned. Then she pushed the door closed and turned on the shower, and he lay there.

Shoving out of the bed, he grabbed a pair of boxers and pulled them on. Then leaned in the door to the bathroom. “I’m going to check in with Steve…”

“Tell him we’ll see him soon?”

“I will.”

Phone in hand, he headed to the kitchen. She’d already set up the mugs for coffee. The instant was fine. After pouring hot water into both cups, he stirred them. He placed hers on the counter in the bathroom before returning to carry his out the front door and into the quiet of the shadows forming as the sun set behind the trees.

Steve answered on the first ring. “Hey—everything okay? You guys went quiet.”

“Long night,” he admitted. “Took a while to get back, and then we were exhausted.”

“Everything go okay?”

“We lost a couple,” James admitted. “But we got the rest and the job’s done. Natalia will call Stark in a minute.”

“That’s—well I’m glad the job is done. Sorry about the losses.” Steve didn’t need him to explain. Of the three of them, he might be the more practical. Soldiers lost people. It happened. But it always hurt.

“Yeah, me too—Steve—I remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“All of it.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Everything?”

He swallowed, and slanted a look back at the house. If he concentrated, he could still hear the shower. “Everything,” he said slowly, his gaze focused on the door. He should have brought his cigarettes out here, but he didn’t dare go back inside to retrieve them.

“Well…hell…are you okay?”

“No,” he told him truthfully. “Not even close.”

“I can come get you,” Steve offered. “I can get the quinjet and head there now.”

“No—” James scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck, yeah I’d like it if you were here but not yet. We’re—I want to keep this as normal as possible for Natalia.”

Silence. “Buck—have you told her?”

No. He shook his head even if Steve couldn’t see him. “No—and you can’t. Just—don’t. Not yet.”

Another long pause. “Okay, I’m listening. What don’t you want her to know?”

“It’s—not that I don’t want her to know it’s that I don’t know how to tell her.” Or if he should tell her. Fuck. He shouldn’t have told Steve.

“Weren’t you the one who told me that we can’t keep things from her? That she has a right to make her own decisions? Even if what we tell her can hurt her?”

Clint had said the same thing. If it could come back to hurt her—then she had to know. This was going to hurt no matter how she learned of it. It was going to more than hurt. Natalia’s mind hadn’t revealed this to her, hadn’t peeled away those layers and maybe there was a reason for it.

He’d been taken…and after…how long had it taken before they sent him to bring her back? It had taken him more than a year to find her and when he caught her, she’d been alone.

“Buck.” The worry in Steve’s voice dragged him back to the present.

“Hang on a sec…” There was movement in the house. He stepped inside, phone pressed to his chest. Natalia stood there wrapped in a towel, hair damp on her shoulders and the coffee cup in her hand.

“Is that Steve?”

“Yeah…” And he gave her the phone when she held out her hand. He didn’t miss a word as he went in search of his smokes. He’d kill for a bottle of vodka, too.

Or maybe just straight bourbon.

Bourbon would be good.

“Hey, did James tell you we’re done?” A beat of silence, then a more sober. “Yeah…we’re good. I think. Mostly. It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be.” Then her voice lowered, “I was, but he seems much better now.”

Was what? Worried about him. He frowned. Cigarettes and lighter in hand, he returned to the living room and she smiled at him.

“Yes, Steve, I promise. I took very good care of James and he took very good care of me. We’re both in one piece—and no bullet holes. I’ve barely got any bruises.” They both glanced down at her hips, and she wrinkled her nose at him. There were a few others but they’d all faded quickly. Sleep and food did wonders for her. “And everything is good there?...any news on the Roxxon piece?...really?”

James pulled out a cigarette and motioned to the outdoors, she frowned and pointed at the room and shrugged. She didn’t care if he smoked inside, but he kind of did at the moment. He needed to figure this out.

“Okay…well I can work on that when we get back—speaking of which, I need to call Tony…yes, he’s right here…and yes, I miss you too. And Steve?” There was a pause, and she grinned at James and he couldn’t help but smile back. “I get the thing about wanting a place now. Not sure I’m ready to do jump into it, not sure we’re in a position to do it yet—but I get it now…” Then she laughed, and one of the stones on James’ heart eased. Steve could make her laugh. “We’ll see you in a few hours.”

Then she handed the phone back to him, and studied him a beat before pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He sighed into the contact, and she frowned at him. He could read the question in her eyes. _Are you okay?_

No. But he would be.

Did he want her to stay close? Always, but he could handle this for now.

She was there for him, he knew that. He’d _always_ known.

“I’m going to talk to Steve for a bit, okay?”

“Okay.” Easy as pie. “I’m going to call Tony.”

He nodded. Stark would keep her on the phone for a bit. The man was really good at talking, and a better distraction. Outside, James lit the cigarette then put the phone back to his ear. “You’re still there?”

“Yeah,” Steve sounded a little more relaxed, if wary. Natalia was good for him, too. She was good for all of them. “She sounded—good.”

“Better—the losses hurt. She wanted to save all of them.” So had he. None of those women or children deserved what had been done to them. How many more had been funneled through that man’s hands? Hopefully Natalia’s Beaumont would be able to find them. But he understood why she took these jobs, why she insisted. He would never not help take those types of men out.

For once, his skills at target elimination would come in very handy.

“Yeah,” his best friend exhaled the word. “Can you talk?”

“Some,” he admitted. “I don’t want to risk her overhearing or…”

“Thinking you’re keeping things from her.” It was a dry observation. “Even if you are.”

“Yes.”

“Okay—what can I do?”

“Fuck…I don’t know Steve. I don’t even know what I’m going to do. A part of me has to verify it’s true before I say a word.” How the hell did he figure it out? He remembered they ran—it was the early 70s, but he wasn’t sure about the specific year. He remembered everything, that was what he said, and he did. He had all the pieces, the important ones. The gaps—the gaps were when he’d been frozen or in between when their missions kept them apart. Those times were fuzzy.

“What do you need to do that?” Fuck, he didn’t deserve her and he didn’t deserve Steve. Steve had no idea what he was going on about, and he was offering to help.

What he needed was to hunt. The early 70s, a couple—they were in the mountains. And they were definitely in the States. That narrowed the locations down. Not New York, he didn’t think. New York and he would have gone to Brooklyn and he’d been giving Brooklyn a wide berth. He hadn’t even let her arrange the flights to come through LaGuardia.

They’d entered from Canada—driven down—through Detroit. Then south and did they go west or east…

Colorado?

Virginia?

Both States had mountains. That had been the discussion. They wanted somewhere remote, quiet, and away from people. But they still needed to be able to get supplies. They’d picked up most of what they needed on the way in, and they could both live off the land. Hunting supplemented them easily enough.

Montana.

Wyoming.

So many places with Mountains.

It had to have been west.

“Buck?”

“Yeah…” His cigarette had burned down, and he lit another one. “Sorry—I’m trying to put the pieces together. I need to figure this out, I need time to track all of it down. To know if what I remember is real.”

“Is there a chance it’s not?”

“The damned thing is, yeah—but I don’t think they gave me this memory. They’d have no reason to do it, even as cruel as it might seem. It would be far worse for her.” No this memory was a gift. A fucking treasure that ripped his guts out. The curve of her shape as the months passed, the surprise in her eyes and the first flutter of movement… “No…if I didn’t dream it, if I didn’t make it up—”

“Bucky.” Quiet command snapped in Steve’s voice. “Breathe. I’ll help, I already said I would. But I need you to focus…what do you need to verify the information?”

“I need to hunt, to research it. I need time…” He stole a glance at the house. “I need time away from Natalia.” He hated the very idea, but he wasn’t wrong.

“Okay. Well she has that last job.”

The art. “You’re supposed to help her with that one.”

“So that’s a couple of days I’d guess—do you need more than that?”

He thought about it. “I don’t know.”

“We’ll figure it out. You shouldn’t do this alone…” He wasn’t taking fucking Sam. But before he could say anything, Steve said, “Tony has the greatest resources, and he’ll help if we ask. He might pry, but we can trust him.”

But Stark might not be so eager to keep this from Natalia. Steve wouldn’t be either. Not that James was.

“Clint.” He’d ask the archer. The archer whose first loyalty was to Natalia, but who had to understand exactly why he couldn’t tell her without knowing if it were true.

“He can’t travel Buck… the broken leg? The fact he’s still on house arrest?”

Fuck.

That left Stark. Because no one else knew about Natalia. No one else knew about James and Natalia.

“I can do it on my own…”

“And that’s where we’re going to disagree,” Steve said slowly. “So it’s Tony or you wait for me, and you and I go.”

“One of us should be with Natalia.”

“I don’t disagree, but I also know Nat can and will look after herself. You’re the one struggling at the moment. So it’s me or Tony. But without knowing more…I don’t like the idea of you struggling with this on your own.”

He’d rather it were Clint. Barton had a way of looking at things, and he seemed to understand on a different level…but Stark had already proven he would do whatever was necessary to help Natalia.

“Are you sure you can’t tell me what it is?” Steve pushed.

“Not here,” he said finally. “Not now.”

Natalia appeared in the windows and she frowned at him. He was behaving abnormally, and she was already alert to his mood. So he changed the subject. “I need to take a shower so we can get going. I think she’s done talking to Stark. Everything secure there?”

“We’re fine,” Steve answered, but James heard the undercurrent. No way Steve was letting this go. He was going to have to talk about it.

“When we get back, we need to talk about Fury.”

“What about him?”

Fuck. They hadn’t called Steve after the bath. They’d both been so tired, they’d just fallen in the bed. “He was here.”

“And you’re just mentioning it now…”

“We were going to tell you this morning, but we were exhausted.” Yes, he’d effectively changed the subject to something else to make his best friend probe. “Fury and Natalia talked…she was not happy with him. He was pushing her to come back to work with him, but she wouldn’t let him ask and she refused every overture.”

“How’d he take that?” There was a quiet intensity in those words.

“As well as one might expect. But Natalia also warned him…he mentioned there were kill orders for her and she asked him point blank if he was sending anyone after her.”

“And he said?” No, the patience in Steve’s voice had gone.

“He didn’t indicate he planned to, but she warned him nonetheless. Warned him if he sent anyone, she would send them back—in pieces.” If she didn’t, James would.

“Great, so now we need to watch our backs for him…”

“No,” James told him. “I don’t think so. I think the man cares. I think he wants her back to protect her, but he’s got terrible interpersonal skills.”

Steve let out a short bark of a laugh. “Go take a shower, I’ll call Nat…and no, I won’t mention that you remember. But I won’t keep it a secret forever, Buck. Secrets from others—fine, I can live with it. No secrets between the three of us—we can’t do that.”

No. They couldn’t.

“Not long, Steve…just long enough to know it’s real before I hurt her.”

Because no matter how he did this—it was going to hurt.

“That bad?” Steve went quiet.

“Yeah.”

“Okay…do what you gotta do. But you’re not alone, pal.”

“I know punk. I know.”

Then he let Steve go and waited until Natalia went to answer her phone to light another cigarette. He had to figure this out. Figure out how to get the answers…they’d hidden, gone off the grid and buried themselves in a day when surveillance didn’t have a flicker of a candle on what was present today. They’d managed to hide for more than a year—maybe even two? No… but definitely more than one. They’d been out, but they’d lingered too long. They should have moved on, but they’d needed the time.

Then they’d come, and he’d drawn them away buying Natalia and their daughter time to escape.

A daughter.

A little girl.

Somehow, Natalia had gotten pregnant. They’d sterilized her, but her body healed. Her body repaired.

And somehow—fuck.

James stared out at the woods around him, barely aware of the muggy air as the sun sank the last few centimeters and left the land in shadow.

It was what Leonid and the others wanted her for. What Ivan wanted from her. A mother of a new race, but Madame B had taken that away. She’d never had another child…and she didn’t think she could. So why had it been possible then?

And he was back to wondering if it had been true or some manufactured dream from when he’d been in the ice, a desperate desire and hope played out in his shock addled mind.

That was why he couldn’t tell her.

Why he wouldn’t tell anyone.

Two people could keep a secret if one of them was dead.

It was his secret until he knew.

He’d promised to never hurt her again.

And he was already liar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of notes. This has been floating in the back of my mind for a while, it has some basis in comics canon, but I've adjusted totally for where this story has gone. And it may or may not work out, because their past is littered with the debris of the choices of others. As always, thanks for reading. Your comments mean the world to me.
> 
> Also, my kiddo is graduating today, so there may not be a chapter tomorrow. I plan for there to be one, but we're out for the rest of the day and into the evening and I've been getting a little behind. So my apologies if I end up skipping a day. Fingers crossed I don't--cause I'm ready for them to be back in New York.


	29. Returning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is right there when Nat and Bucky return...

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

**Returning**

**Natasha**

 

 

 

The flight was quiet with James staring unseeingly at the book in his hands. He’d settled in as soon as they’d boarded and flipped it open to somewhere around the first third, and then sat there—not turning a page. She hardly needed entertainment or even conversation, but the odd, almost out of character behavior left her bemused despite the materials Tony had waiting for her to review—reams of files that made her eyes burn.

Roxxon, as it turned out, had cagily compartmentalized their files. The Isodyne incident, which she was only tangentially aware of thanks to Tanya, wasn’t listed anywhere in the Ponchatoula facility’s server farm. But their files on the sludge, identified as two types—CQ-D and CQ-A—offered up a plethora of data. It was surprising really—the bioorganic compounds had been discovered during exploratory drilling off of Greenland, as well as in the Arctic Circle. The drilling platforms there were defined as research only, because oil drilling in the protected region had not been approved, yet Roxxon had moved swiftly and efficiently, snapping up leases in every cold deep water region they could find—including some in Barents Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk.

The CQ-D was labeled dormant without an interactive biology—or something warmer to activate it. In fact, it was considered the safest of the two bio organics, and its fuel potential was off the charts. One experimental facility had powered off of one ounce of CQ-D for nearly six weeks until an unfortunate incident resulted in a meltdown of all the cooling rods, and a subsequent explosion which contaminated a small region’s plant and animal life—the animal life had been…mutated and most of it had been collected for specimens and removed. The plant life was harvested where possible and also contained.

The flourishing of an eco system in climes previously considered inharmonious—such as those deep underground without sunlight were attributed to the presence of CQ-D. While useful and relatively harmless, it needed to be handled with care and research continued in how to utilize it as a power source without absolute destruction.

CQ-A, however, featured several explicit warnings about the clear and present danger presented by the samples—mainly gathered from sites in and around the Arctic Circle. They resembled the CQ-D in all ways, save one—they seemed to actively seek other biological forms and acted like an invading virus, rewriting the biology to suit their needs for replication, then continuing onward. They were far more interested in fauna than they were flora.

There were videos of some animal tests that left her mildly ill. She tabbed right the hell out of those. Incidences involving _accidental_ human exposure indicated relative intelligence remained observable before and after the _infections_. And that— _stuff_ —had gotten on Steve.

But he’d been resistant to it—so was it the serum acting against the rewrite of his DNA because it had already bound with it? And what would it mean for someone like she or James? Skipping past the data that verged on mad scientist territory, she examined the weaknesses exhibited by both CQ-D and CQ-A: susceptible to extreme cold, prolonged exposure could actually kill it.

Was the liquid nitrogen prolonged exposure? And since they’d harvested the items in and around the Arctic, and they “survived” those conditions, maybe it only made it dormant?

Or was that what it took to transform CQ-A into CQ-D or was that even possible.

Electricity was also a weakness.

Extreme sound if she went by what Tony described at the base in Alaska.

Anything that interfered with the cellular reaction—extreme heat should do the same thing. All of this, and government contracts, too. While the Avengers weren’t being outright attacked, they were being used to clean up the disastrous side effects of the same experiments.

A sigh escaped James, but when she glanced at him his expression remained fixed and unchanging as he stared at his book. Whatever held him preoccupied was not on that page. Had taking him with her been a mistake? He’d—he’d seemed to do well, especially considering everything that happened at Roxxon. Later the stuff with Remy, the bounty hunters—not once did he seem disturbed or upset. If anything, the cool professionalism had given her a measure of comfort because she hadn’t needed to worry about him.

Had that been a mistake?

First the holding area with the girls—that had been ugly. Later the truck hijacking had required a lot of coordination on their parts. They’d killed people. No one she would lose any sleep over.

Fine, if they added some red to the ledger—she’d take it. But James wasn’t her—Bucky Barnes had fought in a war, and then he’d been all but kidnapped into the life they’d lead in Russia. There his existence had become the product of not altogether dissimilar form of human trafficking, where his agency over his own body had been compromised—again and again and again.

He’d been _off_ for a few hours. They’d both needed time when they got back, and she couldn’t say she was the only one to be bone dead exhausted with it all. Had it been too much too soon for him? Should she have pushed to leave him behind?

Staring at him wasn’t telling her anything, and normally she’d poke to see what was wrong. While he wasn’t shutting her out precisely, he definitely didn’t seem to want her in. Then there was the long talk with Steve, and the deliberate exclusion. She could respect their privacy, they were entitled to have conversations she wasn’t privy to. If something were truly wrong, Steve would tell her, right?

Maybe everything had gone too fast?

Fuck.

James wasn’t her—and he’d only recently reclaimed himself. Maybe she shouldn’t have let him dig too deep on this mission. They would be landing in thirty minutes, and he still hadn’t moved. “We’ll be landing soon,” she said quietly. “Want something to drink?”

They’d actually managed their gumbo, and he’d seemed—indifferent to it might be too strong a description, but he’d been neither terribly pleased nor put off by it.

“I’m fine. Do you need me to get you something?” His cool eyes snapped to focus on her.

“I’m okay—good book?”

He glanced at it for a moment, as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “I guess…” He frowned at he page he was on, and then turned it. Finally, he glanced at her again. “I guess I haven’t been good company.”

“You’re fine,” she assured him. “I’ve been working.”

“On?”

A little shrug. “Some of the research we acquired.” Though they were on Tony’s plane and it was handled by Tony’s staff, she was still flying as Nadja Rasmussen, his assistant and the fewer details shared where someone might overhear the better.

“Good?”

“Undecided,” she considered the data and flicked her fingers toward her screen. “It’s a lot to absorb. And it may take more than we have available to work out a reasonable response.”

In other words, if he could read between the lines, she had no idea how they were going to deal with the stuff other than flat out destroy it. That didn’t bode well for anyone absorbed by the substance.

He sighed, then closed the book and turned to face her. She met his gaze easily. Some distant part of herself leaned away from the whole situation, marveling at the sheer ease of being so close to him—and closer still when they’d been in private. A man she’d hunted, who’d hunted her—a ghost story that had helped to destroy the world she’d carefully weaved herself into.

He’d almost killed Fury.

He’d almost killed her.

He’d almost killed Steve.

By all rights, they should all be dead and yet they weren’t…and now…she had James again. There was a rightness in that she didn’t want to question or examine too closely, no matter how much of her past she wanted to reassemble. If not for the wig, the photo static veil and the presence of flight stewards just one bulkhead away, she’d crawl over into his lap and just linger there until she could pull him out of his head.

Yet, she couldn’t escape the way he stared at her as if he could see right through the veil to her. Maybe on some level he could. But she didn’t look away from him, though brown contacts hid her eyes. Weird—she was hidden behind all the camouflage and he was the inscrutable one.

The pilot announced they were descending in preparation for landing and she closed her laptop to store it away. Crossing one leg over the other, she leaned back and settled her hands on the armrest. When James settled his left hand over her right, she smiled. She'd read poetry over the years, enough to recognize a cadence or verse, but there was something about James that always provoked Van Dyke to the forefront.

_I read within a poet’s book, a word that starred the page. “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage!”_

Togetherness wasn’t a cage, and she wouldn’t let it be one. For any of them. She wanted to push him to tell her what was wrong, but not yet. They all had a right to their privacy, and they were both tired. Earlier at the house, he’d been so—determined. It had been overwhelming and intoxicating, but instead of the lightness she’d experienced, he’d seemed to close down more.

So maybe she was the problem?

It was late when they landed, but a car pulled right up to the plane. The benefits available because of Tony, they could avoid passing through the airport, which saved them all time. James carried their bags, having snagged hers before she could. The rear door of the car opened and Steve stepped out.

A grin overtook her worry, and she smiled. He gave her the once over, and the corner of his mouth quirked. Then he had a hand out to James, and they shook hands firmly and Nat wasn’t wrong—something passed between, more unspoken communications. Packing that away, she gave Steve a totally professional nod as he shook her hand, but didn’t miss the teasing stroke of his thumb over her wrist as he gave her a hand into the backseat of the limo.

The privacy partition was already closed. James followed, nudging her over so she was between he and Steve, when Steve settled in next to her. She could have been across on the facing seat, but she happier right where she was. The backseat was more than wide enough for both men to stretch their legs and she waited for Steve to tap the partition and the vehicle to start moving before she said… “All good?”

“Yes, ma’am, Ms. Rasmussen, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like my girlfriend back now.”

The label startled her, and she paused. Girlfriend. She—hadn’t really thought of herself in those terms. James laughed, the first actual show of emotion in several hours as he pulled his tie free. “Smooth, Stevie…real smooth.”

Steve chuckled, and something pulled too taut inside of her loosened. It had been a hell of a three days with the wildest juxtaposition of dangerous missions, rescue ops, and confrontations with former allies, while at the same time, spent in tight quarters with one of the few people alive she thought truly understood her. Then to have Steve be right here…she’d missed him. His absence had been a significantly growing echo in the space around them.

Stripping off the wig with one hand, she deactivated the photo static veil with the other. James already had her backpack opened, and the case for the veil in his palm when she peeled it off. He took it and set it inside, then she plucked the contacts out just as he slid the veil case away, and pulled out the small contact case. She could trash these now, she rarely kept them longer than one or two uses at most, but since he offered, she slid them into the saline solution and blinked free of them before grinning at Steve, and peeling her pair of braids down, and then shaking them out.

“Is this who you were looking for?”

“Hey,” he murmured, and even in the dark, she couldn’t miss the flash of his smile and she leaned against him. He slipped an arm around her and ran his fingers through her hair, tousling it or loosening it more, she wasn’t sure. James tossed her backpack onto the seats opposite them, then gripped her left hand lightly.

“Hi,” she said quietly, and closed her eyes and settled against his shoulder. She was still worried about James, still worried about Roxxon, still sifting information from the breakdowns Tony sent, still musing on Fury’s game plan, still thinking about Clint and his family and how that visit went, and there was even enough time in there to remind herself to send a message to Peter about showing up at the Tower…the next day, it was late, but still before midnight.

Every segment of every compartmentalized item chugged through her mind, and she closed her eyes and just relaxed against Steve. Missing him was such a strange thing, like it had a life of its own. She functioned fine, she did the job, and took care of the mission. She enjoyed having James with her, and they seemed to fall into an almost seamless harmony when it came to it. But even with all of that, the awareness of the missing part was there until she came back and there he was.

Just because she could didn’t mean she wanted to, and it was just—nice to have Steve right there. “I didn’t think we’d see you until we got to the Tower.”

“I thought about it—but I decided I wanted to see you sooner, so I hitched a ride.” He squeezed her lightly, and rested his chin against her hair. It was warm, and comfortable in the limo. She’d barely been outside in the chilly New York air before getting in, but sandwiched between the pair was the warmest place on the planet—and she could say that honestly after leaving the suffocating humidity in New Orleans.

James traced his thumb along the side of her hand. “It’ll be good to be back,” he said lightly. Almost—too lightly.

She didn’t frown, but she did roll her head back to peek at them and found Steve and James just staring at each other. Another one of those silent, non verbal conversations despite the limited light in the back of the limo.

“Okay—what happened?”

Because something was up.

“Nothing,” James said. “Just tired. And I filled Steve in on Fury.”

She sighed. That was not a conversation she’d wanted to have. But Steve just shook his head. “We’ll figure it out Angel, whatever it is. I have news, too. And I was going to wait until tomorrow, but…we might have Sharon Carter around more often.”

“The blonde?” Surprise filtered through James’ tone. “Why?” It came off abrupt, and almost a little hostile. She frowned at him, but he jerked his attention to the window.

Okay. They needed to have a chat. Something was gnawing on him.

“Sam…and I were going to dinner last night?”

He’d said that after they’d gotten turned around following Roxxon. Was that really only the night before? It—had been a long couple of days. “You told James that…” And a glance at James showed him nodding.

“Yeah, well as it turned out—Sam set me up to see Sharon.”

Amusement curved through her, because that sounded like Sam. Focus on Steve’s moods and try to do something about it, which suggested Steve had been lonely. Keeping her a secret had to be wearing on him. But she zeroed more in on Steve’s discomfort and swallowed the rest. “I’m sorry. You’re not a fan of set ups.”

“No,” he told her. “And it was probably good I saw her…I hadn’t…really spoken to her after Germany.”

“Ah…and how did it go?” She kept her tone light. James squeezed her fingers once, and she glanced at him. He shook his head and she raised her brows. Did he not want her to ask or was he worried about what Steve would answer? But his gaze wasn’t on her, it was on Steve…

“Not terrible, but probably not great.” He filled them in about their evening and conversation—including Sharon applying to be the liaison—, and though he kept it general, her heart ached for him. “I guess, we worked it out and I feel like an ass.”

“You’re not an ass,” she told him firmly.

“No, you’re not Stevie,” James added. “You were trying to be upfront with her, and maybe you were a little too blunt—but I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

“You don’t think I should have called her?” Steve asked her.

Bemused, she considered him. “I’m not the right person to ask for relationship advice from.”

“Buck?”

James shrugged. “If you were going to go further with her or if you were interested in her—but were you two _actually_ friends?”

They’d been neighbors for a couple of years. Well, her cover and Steve had been friends. Everything after that…? No, they hadn’t been actual friends, at least not how Steve might define it and definitely not how Nat did. Which was unfortunate, because Sharon wasn’t a bad person.

“Still wasn’t respectful,” Steve murmured.

“So you apologize, maybe give her something to make it up to her—not sure flowers are as easy to pull off but are there friendship apology flowers, Natalia?”

“No,” she said carefully. “Sharon’s not someone you give flowers, too.” Not without muddying the waters. “Unless you—are interested in pursuing something else with her?”

“Don’t even flirt with the idea, Angel,” Steve informed her in a stern voice, and she smiled.

“Then if she gets the job as the liaison, get her a coffee mug or something with a fun saying for her desk. It’s friendly without being presumptive or assumptive.”

“Like the _Have a Nice Day_ mug you got me?” The dry, dry tone gave her pause, and she had to actually think about that one.

Day one, Steve was at SHIELD, and Nick dropped him and his shield on her in her office—the one she’d previously shared with Clint and now would be sharing with Rogers as they crammed a third desk in the room. Biting her lip, she ducked her head. “In fairness…I didn’t really know you then.”

“What was wrong with the mug?” James asked curiously.

“I used it all day,” Steve told him, his tone cheerful and maybe just a bit mocking. “It was a nice mug, and a nice sentiment. Thought it set a good stage for working with Romanoff and she was only the second person I actually knew at SHIELD…”

“Clint was still debriefing and on leave,” she pointed out. Right about then, he’d probably been blackout drunk in some hotel, but she didn’t bring that up. It still made her want to kick his ass for not letting her know how bad off he’d been.

“Yes, so I had this great mug and I carried it to all my meetings…”

Nat had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. It had really worked out rather beautifully as pranks went; not that she got to enjoy it. She’d been sent on a mission about two hours after he appeared in her office and seen the mug on his desk waiting as a gift.

“I think I’m missing something here,” James said. “What was wrong with the mug?”

“The bottom of the mug flipped you off when you saw it,” Natasha said with a straight face. “Just had a middle finger raised inscribed on the bottom.”

The silence in the limo stretched out from one second to the next, and then James began to shake and so did Steve as their muffled guffaws gained strength. Steve pressed his lips to her forehead, still laughing. “You’re lucky I don’t get a whole set of those mugs for us.”

“Why am I lucky that you’re not?” She demanded. “I’d like to see you prank me, Rogers.”

“Oh, don’t tempt him doll,” James still chortled. “Stevie’s got a mean streak.”

“Well, pranking is fun…and it didn’t stop you from using it after you found out,” she pointed out, and Steve chuckled.

“Only in our office. You’ll notice I never took it to meetings anymore.”

“So you were just flipping me off?” That sobered him up for a beat, then he was laughing again. “I kind of miss that mug now,” she admitted. Maybe she could track down another.

Back at the Tower, Steve and James both covered her back so the driver didn’t see her, and then they were in the elevator and rising, and it wasn’t quite like shedding a cover so much as relaxing her vigilance.

“I’m gonna grab a shower,” James announced and he vanished off to his room as soon as they were on their floor. Natasha stared after him a beat, puzzled.

“Hey,” Steve said, nudging her. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” she said, still considering what the hell was going on with James. “We grabbed some dinner before the car came to get us for the airport, but…” It had been a long few days. And it was nice to just be back here… She glanced around the sitting room, there was a blanket folded on the back of the sofa that she’d curled up under the night before they left. There was a book on one of the end tables—James had been reading that one. Another sat on the coffee table, a new one. Probably something Steve had picked up. His sketch book was next to it, and three pencils—one worn all the way down to just the nub.

The remote was on the corner table between the sofa and the chair. Everything familiar—but something was different. It took her a few seconds, but she spotted it. Then she crossed over into the living room and stared at the shelves around the television. Books, knickknacks, vinyl records, and an old school record player filled the shelves, along with a handful of photos, but there were new ones right in the center of it all—it was she and Steve dancing, and one of she and James curled up reading a book together, and a third one right in the middle of the three of them—laughing their asses off in the gym after the tickle war.

Warmth pressed against her back as Steve wrapped his arms around her. “You like it?” The tease of his voice against her ear made her smile.

“I do…they’re…”

“Unguarded. None of us are paying attention to anything but each other.” He rubbed his chin against her head. “And the only other picture of you I have is that one you put on my phone where you crossed your eyes…”

She laughed, the memory buoying her. “Well someone had to show you what a selfie was.” There were perks at having made her way slowly to this century, she got to stop at all the tourist sites along the way. She traced her finger over the edge of the photograph of she and Steve dancing. He was so focused on her, the smile on the corners of his mouth clearly visible.

“Thank you,” she said, then rubbed her palms against the back of his hands.

“I want to add more,” he told her. “Fill the shelves. Make all kinds of new memories.”

Make new memories…she leaned against him. “You know it’s weird, I think I have a couple of pictures of Clint, and some of the team—most of those are from the last few years and on my phone…I didn’t do this.” She traced the one of the three of them.

“Nat you weren’t allowed to treasure these…” He frowned. “Growing up, getting a photo of any kind wasn’t as easy as picking up a phone and snapping a quick shot. We had to go sit for them. They were expensive…”

And the depression hadn’t left he or James with a lot of money.”

Steve motioned to the solitary photo of his mother. “So when we got one, we had to be exceptionally careful. It was precious.” Even her own memories hadn’t been allowed to be that precious.

She flicked a look back to the photos of the three of them, and the fact he’d taken the time to do one of she and James and she and Steve in separate frames on either side of it. “I want to get more of those—I need one of both of you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said slowly, and she could hear the smile in the words.

Pushing forward, she reached up to brush a kiss to his lips. “My turn to go and shower…you said food?” She would be happy with a microwavable meal at the moment.

But Steve chuckled. “Yes I did. I’ve got  bacon and eggs, so breakfast for a late dinner sound good?”

“Hmm…” She leaned her head back as if she had to think about it. “Does that include fried potatoes?” Because Steve made great hash browns, but she preferred the crispier fried potatoes.

“I think I could manage that,” he said, then cupped her face as he studied her. “I missed you, you know that right?”

“I do—and I missed you, too.”

“And the dinner with Sharon?” There was caution in his voice.

“Steve—I’m not mad you had dinner with her. I’m not even upset. I trust you.” It was just that easy. Trust didn’t come easily to her, in fact, the only things she’d ever found easy were deception. But this was different. “I missed you, too.”

“You had Bucky with you—that helped,” he said with a sigh. “When Tony told me about Roxxon…”

“You were irritated because I downplayed it.”

“I was irritated because you skated over whole sections of it—but Buck was there, and I knew he’d get you out if you needed the help.”

A part of her thought she should apologize, but it wouldn’t have rung true. “I’m always going to do what I need to, to protect you,” she told him instead. “To keep the team safe, but—also to keep _you_ safe.” She spread her hand over his heart. “You’re the one who kept taking hits from that stuff.”

“I know, but I’m fine. And I don’t want you taking hits for me.”

“Too bad,” she retaliated and grinned at the spark in his eyes. “If it was down to me saving your life…would you trust me?”

He sighed. “You fight dirty, Angel.”

“I fight to win,” she reminded him. “Winning means you're safe. There are things you do better than I ever could, but there are some things I do that none of you can. You trust me to save your life, right?”

“Always,” he whispered, then dipped his forehead to press against hers. She wrapped her hand around his nape, and he gripped hers. It was familiar and binding, just being together. “But I’m never going to want you to risk yourself.”

“Then we might just be in the wrong business,” she drawled, and his soft chuckle was her reward.

“I know you just got back, but when do you think we need to leave for that last job?”

She opened her eyes to meet his startlingly blue gaze. “Hmm…a couple of days. The thieves are playing coy. Which is fine, I need to see Peter…oh, wait that reminds me,” she lifted her forehead from his and glanced at the ceiling. “Friday, can you send Peter a message in the morning that I’ll expect him tomorrow after school?”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff. Boss would also like you to make some time to go over the research tomorrow, and he suggested lunch. He might be up by then.”

“You mean he’s not still up now?” Her tone was dry, but she appreciated the fact he wasn’t asking her to do it right now.

“He is, and he is quote working on stuff and figured you’d want time with Capsicle before getting your ass back to work end quote. My apologies, Ms. Romanoff. Boss is in a mood.”

Natasha laughed. “Tell him if he doesn’t get at least six hours of sleep, I won’t be there for lunch.”

“I will do that…and Boss said you are mean.”

“Good night, Friday,” she said with a grin then laughed at Steve shaking his head.

“Good night, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Is Clint still here?” she asked Steve. “Or did he have to go back to the Compound already?”

“Still here. Wasn’t budging until he got to see you—apparently you didn’t check your email or something?”

Shit.

Nat closed her eyes and let her forehead thump against Steve’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her and let her nestle there. “Dammit. He’s going to yell at me.”

“Probably,” Steve said, chuckling. “But I let him know I had heard from both of you so he wouldn’t worry too much.”

“Yeah I promised to check in and then…”

“You got busy,” Steve supplied, running his hands up and down her back. “You going to talk to him about Fury?”

Ugh. “I don’t want to talk about him.” She would have pulled away, but Steve tightened his arms once in a gentle squeeze.

“Angel,” he said against her hair. “Fury only ever has as much power over you as you give him, you know that, right?”

“I do,” she said, and she meant it. “I just can’t ever forget that he didn’t trust me. That he actually thought I was Hydra. Maybe I shouldn’t blame him for that—but there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing. And in the end, it didn’t matter…”

She sighed.

“In the end, I was just another weapon and he wasn’t sure if I was his weapon or not.” It was why she hadn’t gone with him after SHIELD fell. It was why she’d kept her distance. Even when he supplied aid or information to the Avengers, she took a step back and kept herself removed from it all.

Steve rubbed her back gently. “I’m sorry,” he told her.

“I’m not,” she found her strength and eased out of his arms to meet his gaze. “If he hadn’t done that—if he hadn’t slipped. I’d probably still be on his leash, still doing everything he asked me to—without question.” That was the most disheartening piece. She’d had her freedom, and she’d willingly surrendered it to someone, and Fury had taken full advantage. So maybe his distrust had done her a favor.

“I wish he hadn’t hurt you,” Steve told her, his expression serious. “He’s a son of a bitch who might mean well…but…”

“No buts. He’s a son of a bitch who gets the job done. I can respect it even if I don’t want to be involved with him ever again.” The casual mention of the kill orders where she was concerned—those had both been a threat and a worry. She didn’t think Fury wanted her dead, but he did want her back in the fold. “Oddly, I’m glad I feel that way…because my loyalty to him pitted me against you. I don’t have that issue anymore.”

He cupped her cheek. “You won’t hear me complain about that.”

“I rarely hear you complain at all.” But she studied him. “You’re okay with Sharon being around?”

With a frown, he met her gaze. “I think so—it wasn’t pretty assuming she only wanted to be around because I was there.”

Nat grinned. “I don’t know—I like being around because you’re here.”

The bland look he gave her made her laugh. “Still…I don’t want you to be uncomfortable either. I mean—second kiss since 1945 and all…” She didn’t get to finish the sentence before his mouth claimed hers and he stroked her cheek, coaxing her mouth to open wider and she sighed as he teased her with lazy strokes of his tongue against hers, and the mildest sting of his teeth as he pulled away and sucked on her lower lip.

“I can live with Sharon being there, but she’s not you, Nat. My focus is still on getting you back on the team…”

She knew that. Yes, she knew that very well. “And that might be impossible.”

“We handle the impossible every day,” he reminded her. “All three of us are impossible, and yet here we are.”

True.

“I’m here for you,” she promised him.

“I know you are—and I plan to pick that gorgeous brain of yours Angel, because Wanda’s back and we’re still trying to find our balance as a team. When you think he’s ready, I think we should have Peter joining us too.”

“You’ve changed your mind about him?” She studied his expression, but he gave nothing away. It was enough to make her so proud of him. His honesty was one of his most refreshing qualities, but it worried her terribly that someone else could take advantage of it.

“Not exactly, but I trust you and after what I saw—I know you’re going to be good for him. So when you think he’s ready, let me know and I can talk to him or you can…” He tilted his head and glanced toward James’ room. “And he’s done, so I should get food started. Or someone will complain.”

Natasha snorted, then said… “Something’s up with him. I’m not sure what, but—I think the job bothered him more than he’s telling me.” Something flickered across Steve’s expression. He already knew. “And he’s already talking to you about it.” She patted his chest. “Okay, good. Tell me if I need to be more worried? I’m trying to respect his privacy and not pry.” No matter how impossible a task that seemed.

Steve frowned. “Angel…”

“No,” she said, pressing two fingers against his lips as she rose to her tiptoes. “You don’t have to tell me. If he’s talking to you, that’s enough. You were friends first, and maybe it’s easier for him to talk to you. I just—I was just worried. I’ll stop unless you tell me I need to be.”

His frown deepened and that concerned her. Then he kissed her fingers. “I’ll talk to him some more,” he promised.

“Okay.” She made herself move away, and headed for her bedroom. “But now I want a shower, and to be just Natasha again, and you’re cooking food, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. And Angel?” He called the last as she got to the door, and she pivoted to face him. He stood there, hands in his pockets, his dark blue t-shirt doing very little to hide the physique it stretched across. “Would you let me take you out day after tomorrow? I know we’re going to be busy your first day back—but before we go for the art, I want to take you to see some of my favorite places in New York.”

“Date number three, Rogers?”

“That would be the plan, Romanoff.”

“Count me in,” she said with a wink, then snagged her bag before heading into her room. Inside, she leaned against the door and sighed. It was such a see-saw of a feeling to be that thrilled to be back with Steve and in the same breath, worried about James. He _seemed_ fine, and he wasn’t _evasive_ , precisely, but he was clearly preoccupied. If he had already started talking to Steve about it, she needed to leave it alone.

For now, she told herself.

She needed to leave it alone for now. Stripping off Nadja’s business suit, she headed for her shower. She had a date with pajamas, and breakfast food, and then curling up with her two favorite people in the world. It was nice to be back…

 

 

She woke up alone, a part of her mind cataloging the absence of others in the room before she even opened her eyes. Stretching slowly, she checked the bed on either side—both empty. The sun was up according to the clock, but the windows were still dimmed to keep it almost twilight in the room. Lying there, she didn’t hear movement outside of her room, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Stretching, she dragged herself out of the comfortable cocoon and after a stop in the bathroom to use the restroom, then wash her hands, her face, and finally brush her teeth, she headed out to the living room. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail as she walked, but the living area, dining nook, and kitchen were all quiet, and dark.

A note was propped against the coffee maker. It had been set up to go, so she pressed the button before claiming the note.

 

_Angel,_

_Hope you slept well. I loved having you right there when I went to sleep, and hated to sneak out early for a run. Buck’s with me, so don’t worry. Clint’s been getting up early, and he likes to have coffee on the roof. It’s chilly, so put your jacket please._

_See you soon,_

_Steve_

 

Nat chuckled. “Friday, is Clint on the roof already?”

“He settled in about fifteen minutes ago, would you like me to let him know you’re on your way up?”

“No thank you, I’ll surprise him.”

Less than five minutes later, she’d poured the coffee into a thermos and grabbed a cup for herself before heading over to the elevator. “All clear up there for me Friday?”

The little reminders that so few knew she was around was sobering, but she wanted to see Clint. She hadn’t since she’d left him at the hospital in Switzerland and that felt like months ago even if it had only been weeks.

“All secure, Ms. Romanoff. I will lock down the roof for the duration.”

“You’re the best, Friday!” She saluted her.

“I do my best, Ms. Romanoff. I do my best…and though you haven’t asked, the Boss was in bed by three, in exactly ninety minutes he will have achieved six hours of sleep.”

“Good.” Very good. “Has he been resting properly the last few days?”

“Better than expected.”

Perfect.

The doors opened to the chilly air, and if her nose wasn’t betraying her, a hint of snow on the breeze. That—was awkward. It was still a little early in the season for snow here, but not impossible.

“You’re back from your run early,” Clint commented from where he sat in his wheelchair, staring out over the city. An empty mug in his left hand.

“Well I would imagine very early since I didn’t go running,” she said by way of greeting. His shoulders stiffened a fraction, but he didn’t turn to face her. “And in the interest of asking for clemency because I was an ass, I come bearing coffee.”

Not waiting for his response, she crossed to where he’d parked and dragged a chair over to sit on facing him. Unscrewing the top of the thermos, she filled her mug and then offered to fill his. The bland look in those gray-green eyes spoke volumes for how unimpressed he was.

“I didn’t check the account,” she told him by way of apology. “I’m sorry. I said I would, and I didn’t.”

“So were you lying or just distracted?” The blunt, hard edge of the question grounded her.

“Definitely distracted—I was on the job. And I had a lot of compartmentalizing to do, and then I was just tired…” None of those excused not checking. “I’m sorry I let you down. I…don’t really have an excuse for it.”

With a quiet studying gaze, he took a sip of the coffee. His half sigh and easing of his frown suggested she’d already begun to work her way free of the hook. “Fill me in?”

So she did—everything from meeting Remy at Limbo to the Roxxon infiltration to the incident with the bioorganic material and her subsequent escape before they went after the human traffickers. The only part she left out was Fury. She just didn’t want to talk about Nick. Not yet. Not even to Clint.

By the time she’d finished, she’d drunk most of her coffee and had to refill it. He held his mug out expectantly and took the last from the thermos before saying, “You ever thought about what a vacation is supposed to look like?” Forgiveness granted. It was that easy between them. Even when she was the stubborn one.

She smirked. “I had a job to do, not a vacation.”

“And you took Barnes with you.” He canted his head to the side. “He handle it all okay?”

“It was…it was great.” No other way to describe it. Yes, she was worried about him but trusted he and Steve to let her know if she needed to be more worried. “It was like we’d always worked together.”

That part was true. She could read him, and he her. They moved like they planned it ahead of time.

“Okay,” he said slowly, and she took the time to study him. His color had been better, but he wasn’t sickly pale beneath his tan. There was a restlessness to him she understood. “Stark’s doing just fine by the way, and my brain is getting a workout trying to keep up with him.”

She chuckled.

“And the kid’s not bad, either. Though, it’s kind of like listening to Stark and Banner when they’d go off on a tangent, only with a lot more movie references.”

“He really likes 80s movies,” she said. “I noticed that.”

“Yeah, you can say that.” He shook his head. “He’s good for Tony though. So good call there.”

“I think Tony’s good for him, too. The kid has a lot of energy—and a lot of optimism.”

“I noticed that.” They shared a look of comical horror, then grinned. Though Clint’s smile faded and he looked more thoughtful than anything. “Phil would have liked him.”

“Phil would have adopted him,” she said drily. “Though he seemed to favor disparate soldiers and wayward assassins, I think the whiz kid would have moved to favored position fast.”

Clint let out a bark of laughter. “True—and talk about unfair comparisons. We can’t even compete with that level of cuteness.”

Nat snorted. “Speak for yourself, I can be exceptionally cute.”

He flicked a balled up piece of paper at her, but she caught it before it could bounce off her cheek. “I am the master of charm and cute, and I can’t compete with that kid.”

“Hmmm…” Parker had his charm, but he was too painfully earnest. Too much of an open book. No filter. All dangerous for their line of work.

“Yeah, you don’t fool me. That kid has you wrapped around his little finger.” Clint said knowingly. “Just don’t let Lila find out or she’ll be jealous of all the attention her aunt is giving someone else.”

A pang echoed in her chest. “How are they?” She missed those kids.

“They’re great, Tasha. They asked about you—a lot. Hated not being able to tell them you were okay.”

She sighed. “I hate that I can’t go and see them.”

“Laura’s suspicious, you know. And she’s worried that you haven’t called her at all.”

“I want to, but…” There had been so much going on and she really didn’t want to put them into any danger. They’d worked so hard to keep them out of it.

“No buts,” Clint said firmly. “They need to hear from you and you need to hear from them. Nate’s getting so big, and I feel like a stranger.” He sighed, and his eyes darkened. “But he remembers me, and that’s something.”

“The pictures you sent were great.”

“Yeah…” he fished out his phone, then held it up so she could see a picture of Lila in the beginnings of her flower costume. “They’ll be back in a few weeks…. Laura and the kids are going to spend Christmas at the Compound.”

Her heart squeezed. “You guys love Christmas.”

So did Steve. She didn’t know if James was a fan. Tony would deck the whole Tower out. Sam liked to cook huge meals, with all the trimmings. Wanda had liked to make desserts, while Rhodey supervised often claiming that years of wrangling Tony made him an expert in disaster management.

Both Christmases with the new team, and several of the Christmases with the older team had always been marked by strange rituals, laughter, and lots of alcohol. But she’d enjoyed the festivities nonetheless and she liked to shop for them—to find a gift that had meaning, just for them. Christmas at the farm had been an entirely different experience, but no less warm and full of laughter.

“Hey, I didn’t tell you that to bum you out.” Clint frowned at her. “We’ll figure something out by Christmas.”

Maybe.

Maybe they would.

“It’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Even if I have to be a secret Santa, I think I can manage the stealth part of that mission with no problems.”

With another laugh, Clint shook his head. “You would make a scary ninja Santa.”

“Hmmph,” she made a face. “I would be the stealthiest elf alive.”

“Granted…but you do know making explosive Christmas ornaments doesn’t count.”

“I didn’t do that,” she argued. “That was Stark.”

Then they were both laughing. Tony had indeed made surprise exploding ornaments one year—most of them had been packed in glitter. Thor had been less than pleased to be turned into a shimmering Viking, and Nat had only narrowly avoided her own glitter bombing—but Steve’s shield had taken it right in the face.

“I can’t believe we’re that close to Christmas, it’s…”

“Halloween in a couple of days, and Thanksgiving in four weeks, Christmas is right around the corner…”

Huh.

It would be her first Christmas with Steve and James….well…the first Christmas as the three of them. She’d had Christmases with Steve but only as friends, and those had been plenty fun. Still, it was also the first time the whole team would be together after everything that happened with the Accords. It was a chance to celebrate their ties, and maybe reaffirm them. All she’d need was a little on the ground support and…

“I can already see the wheels turning…” There was an indulgent note in Clint’s voice and Nat smiled as she took a sip of her coffee. “Whatever it is…count me in.”

She laughed, he never agreed so readily without details. “You’re bored.”

“Yeah,” he said without missing a beat. “I am bored.”

Eyebrows raised, she lifted her coffee mug and warmed herself despite the chilly bite to the breeze. “I might have a few ideas…”

“I’m all ears.” He snapped his fingers. “Read me in.”

And despite the cold, despite the latent worries about all the open irons in the various fires, this was one mission she couldn’t wait to plan. “Well, first things first,” she said. “We’re going to need to gather some intel…”

 


	30. Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky talk

**Chapter Thirty**

**Brothers**

**Steve**

 

 

They were on the far side of Central Park and Bucky showed no signs of slowing much less stopping. Steve hadn’t said a word when Buck woke him with a hand on his shoulder and head jerk to the door. He got dressed in his running clothes and left a note for Natasha while Buck set the coffee machine up for her.

On the ride down in the elevator, he’d glanced over at him and Bucky just shook his head. Once outside, the sun rising over the river, he’d set off at a swift pace that Steve matched, and then they just ran. They’d completed three circuits of the park before he veered out of it and headed down 110th toward Riverside Park. With the river in sight, he slowed and finally dropped to a walking pace hands on his hips.

Rolling his head from side to side, Steve matched him and kept an eye on their surroundings. Usually Bucky was hyperaware of everything, always looking—today he just—he wasn’t. He was very focused forward. Or maybe it was his imagination. Near an overlook, he stared out at the river and toward New Jersey.

“Still can’t believe you listed yourself as being from Paramus,” Bucky said, the panting barely audible under his words.

“Are you _ever_ going to let that go?” Steve laughed.

“Not likely…” He raked a hand through his hair. “I remember the Expo. I remember you ditching out on the girls to go try and sign up again…and I remember the next time I saw you, you were—” He motioned toward him.

“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. Leaning against the rail, he studied his best friend. Bucky’s gaze continued to be far away. “So when you said you remembered everything…”

“Yep. I remember the 107th. Remember Dum Dum, and Gabe. Morita, and Junior, and Pinky…” He exhaled a long breath. “Even Phillips—it was grainy before, but I can see them all now. I remember the winters when you couldn’t shake your cough, and doubling up my work on the docks to make sure we could afford you a new coat when you wouldn’t take one of mine.”

Steve blinked furiously at the sudden burning behind his eyes.

“I can see Ma, and the girls. I remember shuttling them to school, and helping them with homework. Hell Stevie…I remember your mother and how fucking helpless I felt after she died and you wouldn’t consider moving in with us.”

“Yeah, throw the couch cushions on the floor and shine your shoes,” Steve did his damnedest not to sniffle on the last word but…this was Bucky. Not just the pieces of him but all of him.

“I remember everything Zola did too…well the parts I was awake for, and the stuff I decided to keep from you.” There was a grimace in his voice, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t get used to what had happened to you and I didn’t want to think about what he’d done to me. I was alive, you were alive—that was good, right?”

Hands still on his hips, Bucky turned sharply left and started walking along the river. “I remember waking up after the train…I remember repeating my serial number over and over, but it didn’t do any good. Then eventually, I gave that up and little bit by little bit, I just stopped being me. Then I became him…”

He wasn’t sure what else to do but stick with him as he moved.

“And then I met her.” He laughed. “Actually the Soldier met her—and he was fascinated, but she woke me up inch by inch.”

“Buck…” Steve gripped his shoulder and stopped his forward motion, and his best friend spun to face him, his expression torn. “Hey…slow down.”

“I can’t—if I stand still, like it’s all right there and it’s going to crash down on me.”

“Okay—then keep talking to me, but breathe, pal. Just breathe. I’m here and I don’t know what all is in there, but I can imagine. You’re safe, and you made it. She made it. She’s right back there, sound asleep.”

“No thanks to me…”

“Buck.”

“Steve, I broke both of her legs once, and both of her arms to make sure she couldn’t escape when they sent me to bring her back.”

The chill went up his spine.

“I did it—and she didn’t even fight me back. She killed every single member of the team sent with me, but not me. She didn’t even raise her gun and when I broke her leg…she said it’s okay…” He choked back a horror filled laugh. “She just kept telling me it was okay until she blacked out from the pain.”

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face.

“I’ve shot her. Broken her. Beaten her. Strangled her. And she still cares about me…”

“Bucky, you didn’t do those things…”

“Yeah, I know Steve. I had no control over it—but I still did it.” He held up his hands. “It was still these hands.”

He bowed his head and paced away, slumping at the rail and looking down at the water. The bird sanctuary in the distance added to the cacophony of the cars passing on the bridges overhead.

“You know she won’t hold that against you,” Steve told him. If he was certain of nothing else, he was certain of this. He’d never known anyone as brave and fearless as Nat. “She’s no stranger to this pain that you’re in.”

Bucky laughed, and it was bitter and wet. “She could have been free years before she escaped…that chair in Azzano…that was the last time I saw her before I shot her in Odessa…Leonid found out about us somehow—and they were waiting when we returned from a mission.”

Steve bowed his head. Fuck…he couldn’t comprehend that no matter how he could try to stretch his mind to encompass it.

“I want to scream, but it wouldn’t do any good. I want to find every single one of them and kill them, but they’re all dead…I even got to kill at least one of them a few weeks ago.” Bucky swallowed.

“I’m sorry, Buck. I wish I had something better to say. But I am so fucking sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Don’t cut her out—she’s in this fight too…” She’d had her memories taken, and she’d only recovered the smallest portion of them.

“Not yet,” Bucky told him, then pinned a look on him. “And you can’t tell her Steve.”

“Just—give me a reason why. Why do you want to hide this?”

“Because…of what I remembered. There are things I need to know if they’re true before I tell her anything.”

He’d said that before. “Could she confirm it?”

“If she could—I think she would have already.” He turned his gaze back out to the water, hands braced on the railing.

“Okay, so—whatever this is, she hasn’t recovered it yet.”

Bucky shook his head as his only answer.

“And you’re not sure if the recovery is real?”

A brief nod. “You have to know—one of the ways they gave me languages is they programmed me with them. I didn’t just _learn_ though—admittedly Natalia helped hone my Russian. My accent used to be bad.”

“According to her, your accent is still pretty bad.” That earned him another laugh. “You taught her English?”

“Perfected it…she had the basics, but…her grammar and diction were awful. So I taught her my language and she taught me hers.”

“You didn’t make her sound Brooklyn, though.”

“That’s probably her—she can blend in so seamlessly—she had an ear for it and a talent. They didn’t program her with languages, she learned them on her own. We were in Saudi Arabia once…longer term assignment and she spent half her days wandering around in robes hidden from view and loving it because she said it was real anonymity and she learned the language just from _listening_ to the other women in the markets and in the gatherings they held. Drop her anywhere—and within a few days she’ll have a grasp of the language, an established base, and fresh allies. Give her a month, and she’ll have the beginnings of an army. Give her a year, and she’ll take over the whole damn thing.”

“You know—that probably shouldn’t sound as appealing as it is.” But he didn’t doubt it for an instant.

Bucky flashed a grin at him. “She’s amazing. I could never get over her. She’s smart, she’s fast, she can fight like a demon right out of hell…”

Steve laughed, and leaned onto the railing. The sweat on his skin had already dried in the cool breezes coming off the river. The gray clouds overhead had been gradually darkening all morning, and slowly blotting out the sunrise. “The first time I met her—we were on the hellicarrier, I hadn’t been out of the ice more than a few days. I was still—acclimatizing. Fury showed up with the files—and he had files for everyone, including her. Hers was…interesting reading—knowing what I know now, it was heavily redacted too—, but she was just cool as hell whether it was going over what Loki had done, piloting us to face him or bringing him back in, or fighting aliens in the street…unflappable. And she never stops thinking.”

“Nope,” Bucky said slowly. “Even when I was the point on a mission, she could always see other ways to get it done. She only argued with me a few times—but she was right every single time she did…except when I wouldn’t let her win. When I pulled rank. Then…well I guess I would never know if she was right.”

They fell quiet, bird song from sanctuary behind them filled in the silence while a couple of seagulls doing lazy swirls chased each other in front of them. “Buck…”

“I’m okay, Steve,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how I’m okay, but I am. It’s clawing up inside of me and I want to hit something a lot, but I think about her or you and…I know I can get through this. I’m the same guy I was before it all came back, but I’m just more—me.”

“Okay…” He didn’t believe him, because how could he possibly be okay after everything. “But this isn’t Azzano. I’m not going to just accept that everything is fine just because you say it is. I’m not just going to act like nothing has happened.”

Bucky pivoted to face him, and his careworn expression tugged at him.

“You want me to not tell Nat, I don’t agree with it, but I’ll respect it. You want to pretend you’re fine, I’m not okay with that. I’m not going to say yeah, just ride it out Buck…you have got to talk to someone.”

“I am talking to someone,” Bucky told him. “Steve, you and Natalia—you’re the only two who would really understand. The only two who knew me then…even if your thens were different.”

“And the part you don’t want to tell her about?” A month earlier he would have killed to have this kind of conversation with Bucky when his best friend was still frozen in cryo and he’d been tearing through his journals looking for any piece of his old friend.

Bucky gave him a wary look. “Don’t ask me…”

“I’m not going to…I was going to tell you to talk to Friday. You said you needed to do research. You can ask her to secure the search to your voice print only, and give her all the parameters, she can probably help.” He’d been thinking about it, because Bucky hadn’t wanted to tell him, and probably wouldn’t reach out to Tony and Clint was hampered. “Nat and Friday work together a lot, if you hadn’t noticed, and Friday may not be boots on the ground, but she might be able to help you track down records…”

“Satellite images?” Bucky said slowly, frowning. “You think she could access old images from years ago?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Steve said, trying not to think too hard about Bucky would need old satellite images. “But if it comes down to you going off to look—same rules apply that we’re putting on Nat.”

Bucky frowned at him. “She just took off for a solo job that landed her in Spain before it was all said and done.”

He sighed. “Partners, Bucky. She briefed us on the fact she had to go…”

“Yeah but there’s a difference, you’re worried I’m going to slip,” Bucky told him. “With her, we’re worried she’s going to bite off more than she can chew.”

“Less worried about slip than having to deal with someone who might have one of your triggers…c’mon Buck—we just went through the triggers with Nat. We both saw what that did to her. And the last time you were triggered…” He blew out a breath.

“…I nearly killed her,” Bucky finished for him. “I’m aware. But I’ve never been this clear before—not that I can recall. Even with Natalia pulling me back, I’ve never known who I was before, during, and after like I am now. So could I still be triggered?” He lifted his shoulders. “Maybe—but I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. Not this time.”

“I don’t want to risk you…”

“This isn’t about a risk to me.” Bucky pushed away from the railing and faced him. “Steve—I can’t tell you. Not yet. Not until I know. Too many things they programmed into me, and if this is one—then I’d rather not drag either one of you into it.”

“You realize that we’re willing to be dragged in, yeah?” Because this was the same guy who took the extra shifts to make sure Steve could afford his medicine, and dragged him out of fights. How many hits had Bucky taken because he had to wade into it to get Steve out? “You know, after Azzano—you could have gone home. You were sick, you’d been tortured—Phillips would have given you medical discharge and sent you home.”

“Yeah, then who would have kept your ass out of the fire, punk?”

“As I see it, my ass leapt a lot of fires,” he said with a wry grin. “But it…it would have meant you weren’t on the train.”

“Then it could have been you getting blown out of it,” Bucky pointed out. “How would that have been better? You go down, no one’s there to stop Schmidt. They would have gotten the info out of Zola, but without you—would their plan of taking Schmidt’s base have worked?”

Probably not. They’d have needed at least another full division. Maybe more—and Schmidt had been too busy posturing for him to launch his planes immediately.

“Steve, I can’t be sorry about the train. I can’t be sorry about any of it,” Bucky told him. Around them the park was getting busier, while the road above more crowded. They’d headed out early, but the city had woken up around them. “I wouldn’t have ever met Natalia—and if I hadn’t been there that day of her graduation—maybe you wouldn’t have gotten to meet her either. So—things happen for a reason. Maybe she was the reason.”

“I wish—sometimes I wish there was a way to go back to then—to get you both out.”

“Be a bit hard since you were in the ice,” Bucky pointed out and Steve glared.

“You don’t need to beat me up with your logic.”

His best friend chuckled. “Punk, you want to shoulder the weight of everything and everyone like it’s your burden. It’s never been all on you, no matter how many times you decided it was.”

“Just like I wasn’t your burden when you dragged me out of alleys, or split meals, or gave me a coat you ‘outgrew’ because mine was threadbare?” Steve grinned. “Oh wait, and stick around a war you didn’t want to fight in the first place because your best friend was so stubborn he found a way into the fight?” Spreading his hands, he eyed Bucky. “This is not a fight either one of us is going to win.”

“No, probably not.” Bucky said, shaking his head. Then he looked out over the park. “You know, when we were kids—I’d never have pictured this.”

“No,” Steve agreed. “Me neither.” The city sprawled beyond them. Manhattan had always been something upscale, with its growing collection of skyscrapers and upper class residents, but it was more than just the buildings. It was the cars, the planes, the Internet. Everything was so close now, right at their fingertips, and people still kept each other at arms length. “Sometimes I never think I’m going to get used to it—then I think about the movies we can watch at home…and I’d miss those if they were gone.”

Bucky chuckled. “Those aren’t so bad…I kind of like the food we can order from just about anywhere—the constant hot water is definitely high on my list.”

They both shared a grin.

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for never giving up on me.”

“You’d never give up on me.” He gave Bucky’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m not giving up on you now. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You ready to head back?”

Bucky glanced at the river as if he had to think about it. “Yeah, let’s go see if our girl is awake.”

“She’s probably up and hanging with Clint by now if Tony hasn’t stolen her away, though he mentioned something about lunch with her.” Between the two of them, they’d probably figure out Roxxon’s plans and get the team all the info they’d need to effectively remove the bioorganic material as a threat.

“Then we better get back or we won’t get breakfast with her.” The run back went swiftly, they and since they weren’t doing circuits but heading straight, they had to be careful of pedestrians and other runners in and out of the park, but still the race left him exhilarated, especially when Bucky grinned at him and tried to pull ahead. It chased away the spectre of what haunted him, however briefly.

A couple of tourists waved at them as they came up to the doors and Steve gave them a polite nod as Buck ducked inside. Security didn’t let them come any farther. Once in the elevator, he said, “Friday, is Natasha still up on the roof?”

“No, Captain Rogers. Agent Barton had to go to PT on one of the lower levels, and she went to her own floor, and has been for the last forty minutes.”

“Take us to her floor, please.” While she seemed content living in the third bedroom on his floor, all of her things—well what things she’d had at the Tower—remained on her floor mostly. He’d seen a couple of items migrate, but Nat…for all the presence she had, tended to leave a very small footprint.

And how much of that was because she was always prepared to move on?

The doors opened to her floor, and Bucky froze for a split second as the music washed over them. “Natalia’s dancing…” He tapped Steve’s shoulder. “Come, but stay quiet.” He was a half-a-step ahead of Steve as they headed for her studio.

Seeing her dance the other day in the gym had been a revelation, nearly as big a one as having danced with her the night before. Nat didn’t share her dancing, and that she’d chosen to share it with them? The music flowing from the studio was something modern, but as they slid in the door quietly the music changed.

Nat was there in the middle of the studio, dressed only in a leotard that hugged her and her pointe shoes. On her knees, she gradually unfolded as a woman sang soft lyrics, and she moved as though the air itself had mass, and she pressed into it and up, a dream come to life.

Then the music picked up and the woman asked for a reason, but Nat’s movements became sharper, and more deliberate as she stepped with the beat of the bass. When the song demanded a reason and that a little bit was enough because they weren’t broken, just bent Steve held his breath. Nat moved with the lyrics, into them and out, telling a story as though she choreographed it to the music perfectly.

It was the story of someone who’d become lost, and all she needed was a reason to put herself back together again, and she was looking for that reason. But the presence in Nat’s body, the way she flowed with the music, and the fact she picked up her pace and slowed to almost floating with the music itself captivated him.

And on the last lyric, she ended en pointe with her arms stretched wide, sweating, and smiling as her gaze fixed on them.

They both applauded, then Buck swept her up into a hug. “That was magnificent Natalia…”

“I’m all sweaty,” she laughed at him, but gave him a hug, then grinned at Steve and he followed to pull her into a hug of his own. “Good run?” she asked when he set her on her feet. She grabbed a towel and wiped her face, as she glanced from one to the other.

“Yeah,” Steve said, sliding a glance at Bucky. “He’s still slow.”

“Hey,” Bucky mock-glared at him. “I was taking it easy on you.”

“Oh, is that what you call it…”

She chuckled. “Considering how late it was when we got to sleep, I want to say thank you both for not waking me at whatever unholy hour you two got up to run.”

It was a good sound, and as worried about Buck as he was, the fact the weight in his expression lightened around Nat eased some of the concern. “Done? Or do we get to watch you do another?” Steve had no problem settling in to watch, he could watch her all day.

“I’m good, I think.” She twisted open thermos of water and took a long drink. “I just needed to clear my head and this does it.”

He could see that. The ease in her smile, and the glint in her eyes were evidence of the lack of tension cording her tight. The first week or so after the incident with Ross, she’d wound tighter and tighter. The jobs gave her an outlet for it…Nat didn’t handle leisure well.

Turning that idea over in his head while they made their way to his floor, and everyone separated to showers, Steve considered the fact that Nat didn’t take _vacations_ , not like Sam who went to see his mom or friends, or Rhodey who would take time to spend with his family or Wanda and Vision who had in the year they’d trained taken a few weekends to explore the world.

Towel around his hips after his shower, Steve trimmed his beard. Before all that, at SHIELD and with the Avengers, Nat just—worked. There was an odd weekend here or there, when she had to have gone out to Clint’s farm. But really any significant time away?

He paused, studying himself in the mirror. Was he one to talk? How had he spent his time? Train, watch movies periodically, train some more, avoid the dates Nat tried to set him up on, occasionally go on a date, and missions. All the missions—most of which she’d been present for especially with the STRIKE team. What off time he’d had after SHIELD fell had all been poured into finding Bucky.

Now?

Old habits.

Except he filled in his time with spending time with Nat and that…that was a nice addition. As was hanging out with Bucky.

A light knock on the door had him glancing to the side. “Come in,” he called, then Nat was there dressed in a tank top, and sweatpants with a hoodie tied around her waist. Her wet curls and rosy glow from the shower completed the picture. “Hey…”

“You’re not shaving right?” She widened her eyes almost comically.

Hands braced on the counter, he grinned at her via the mirror. “Just cleaning it up. And to be honest, I’m getting kind of used to it.”

“Me too.” She folded her arms and came to lean in the door. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” he assured her, double-checking that his trim was even before setting the scissors aside and cleaning up the hair that had fallen. “And I think I should be asking you. I had a relatively quiet few days.”

“You have asked me, but we were gone, and I know what it’s like being the one left behind.” She pushed away from the door, and approached him. With light fingers she scraped her fingers lightly against his nape. “This is getting longer—which I am in no way complaining about—but if you want to trim it up, let me know.”

“You do haircuts now?” He eyed her in the mirror, liking the image of her right there next to him.

“I do all sorts of things, Captain Rogers. I thought you’d know that by now.”

He chuckled. “True—but barber?”

She tilted her head, continuing her light scratches from his hairline to his nape. It was a relaxing sensation. “I can take care of my own hair, and have on many occasions. Taken care of Clint’s hair on the road…” Then she frowned.

Steve turned, and caught her hand as it fell away from his head. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to jar awake some bad memory.”

“It’s not a good or bad memory, it just occurred to me—I know how to straight edge shave a man, how to cut hair, and style hair not just for men, but also women. I can guess I would have learned the latter for myself, but I honestly…I don’t remember how I learned the former.”

Cupping her face, he captured her gaze. “Maybe you can shave me some time?” It was the first thing that came to mind, but he didn’t want her slipping down that dark and twisting path.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe—but that would mean saying goodbye to the beard.” She smoothed a hand against his cheek, then down to his jaw. Chuckling at her expression, which was more cat with the cream than troubled now, he caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.

“I can grow it back.”

Charmed, she smiled. “Then maybe.”

“All right, scoot missy,” he said, giving her palm a second kiss before releasing her. “I need to get dressed.”

“Well, if you insist,” she murmured backing up a pace and giving herself a long, leisurely look at him. “I’ll go start on breakfast…”

His skin went hot and flushed at the scorching look in her eyes, but she let him off the hook with a wink before disappearing out of his bedroom. Leaning back against the counter, Steve blew out a breath. Damn it was good to have them back, but at the same time, she tested every inch of his self-control and all she’d done was look at him.

Breakfast turned out to be blackberry crepes, which involved a lot of playful criticism from Bucky about her abusing the pancakes to make the super thin crepes. Steve enjoyed the antics even more when Bucky tried to steal a crepe when her back was turned and she nailed him with a wooden spoon from three feet away, the spoon smacked his knuckles and bounced to almost catch him in the face before he caught it.

“Damn doll, the nuns didn’t even smack my knuckles that hard.”

“Then go try to steal their crepes,” she told him with impudence. “This after insulting them.”

“I didn’t insult them, I just said they were sorry pancakes.”

Nat turned around and fixed him with a look that had Bucky raising his hands in surrender and made Steve hide a laugh. “Why don’t you set the table?”

“You know, why don’t I set the table?” A flash of the old Bucky inhabited that cocky grin as he scooted around the island and stole a kiss from her on his way past, narrowly avoiding another swat. The ease in the way they moved around each other relaxed him. While Nat made a couple of dozen crepes—he’d have to ask Friday later where she found all the blackberries—Steve wasn’t sure it would be enough food until Nat opened the oven and brought out a huge double tiered platter of bacon she’d _baked_ while using the stove top.

Gaping, he stared from it to her then back again.

“What?”

“You baked the bacon?” It smelled fantastic. But who baked bacon?

“I did—it’s a lot less greasy this way. Why?”

Steve shared a look at Bucky, and they both shook their heads. “Nothing I’m sure it’s great.” He let Bucky rescue the trays of bacon from her and then Steve stole a kiss. “Thanks for breakfast Angel.”

There was a hint of suspicion in those eyes, but she softened a little and bumped his hip with hers.

Once settled at the table with coffee, juice, the crepes and bacon, the food went fast. Even the oven-baked bacon was amazing. Nat ate far lighter than either of them, but still ate her fair share, and stole a bite of one of Steve’s crepes when he was concentrating on the bacon and then snitched a piece of bacon off Bucky’s plate.

It was nice, it was comfortable, and even the anxiety from the riverside abated under the domestic atmosphere.

“Wait,” Bucky said, eyeing her. “You’ve been to college how many times?”

“Three….no wait, five times,” Nat said, ticking them off on her hands. “University of Moscow in 1958 to 1960—but that could have just been a cover, it’s a little sketchy, then Oxford in 1989 to 1990, Yale in ’95 to '98 or thereabouts for three years on and off, actually graduated that time with a degree, then Université Paris Descartes for a couple of years in the early 2000s, I almost had enough credits for that graduation, but I had to move on…then George Mason University for a few classes um…2009 to 2012—ish. Was going to do some more after New York, but I was pulling double duty and well—I’ve been busy since then.”

Just when he thought she couldn’t impress him more, she trotted out juicy tidbits like that. Steve gaped. “What did you study?”

“Well, the one degree I have is in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Yale. I studied politics, cognitive science and dance at Moscow, more cognitive sciences at Oxford, then when I was in Paris, I was pre-med… and I just took whatever looked good in the catalog at George Mason, some law classes, criminology, ethics, and some refresher courses on program design…just keeping myself sharp.”

“I always knew she was smarter than me, Steve, but I think I’ve officially gotten dumber in the last fifteen minutes.” Bucky’s lips quirked and Steve laughed.

“Ditto…I had…and you speak how many languages?”

“Six—seven, wait, no it's eight now. I think.” Natasha said with a careless shrug. “That’s an occupational hazard, but I did learn sign language as a hobby rather than a class, but I do like learning new languages—I just like to keep my mind occupied.” She sat with one to knee to her chest as she reached for her coffee. “Besides, the best way to assimilate into a culture—go to their universities. You learn all the colloquialisms swiftly, and no one looks askance when you don’t know things because students come from all over the world. It’s why so many deep cover operatives start on college campuses in order to forge the most cast iron covers with a network of interpersonal ties that easily stand up to scrutiny.”

“You really liked going to school, didn’t you?” For some reason, the idea of Nat actually pursuing something for pure pleasure but grounding it in pragmatism so she could let herself do it left him both elated and sad.

“For the most part…I thought for a while, after the team was settled, I’d go to SUNY and see what classes they offered…maybe get Wanda to go and I’d keep her company. It would have helped her acclimate better.” Melancholy drifted through her eyes, but she shook it off. “But that didn’t happen—but you know that’s not a bad idea, now that she’s back. Steve, you should encourage her to take a couple of classes. Nothing hard, at least one thing she doesn’t know anything about and one thing she really enjoys. Always take at least one class you really enjoy because it motivates you to continue with the others.”

Then Nat poked Bucky with her toes. “And school would be good for you—help you adapt more to the 21st century, and immerse yourself back in American culture. Your Russian may not be flawless, but you can still taste it from time to time in your words. Besides, I want to know what you’d study for fun.”

Bucky snorted. “I was going to do engineering back in the day, but…now I don’t even know what I like.” He wasn’t quite looking at her. And Steve started clearing the table of dishes. Buck rose to help him, but he nudged Nat back to her seat. “You cooked, we’ll clean up. What about you, Steve?” Buck shot him a look that said _help_. “What would you study if you went to school?”

“Art,” Steve answered that easily enough, though heat stung his face. “Always wanted to study it, but school wasn’t in the cards back then. We barely had enough nickels to rub together to eat much less take a class.”

“So all the stuff you draw is self-taught?” Natasha sounded impressed and that sent another wave of heat to his cheeks.

“Some, I did get to take a few of the open classes the campuses offered when I had money for the bus, then I spent a lot of time at the museum—it was free back then.”

“That’s right,” Bucky said as he filled the sink with water. “You were taking classes at the Student’s League.”

“Yep,” Steve said, clearing the stove of the pots and pans. Then while Bucky washed, he rinsed. “But going back to school’s not a bad idea, now that I think about it.”

“You should do it…we can afford for you to take whatever classes you want—and after the next job, we can definitely cover four years of tuition anywhere you want to go.”

He shot her a look over his shoulder at the _we_. “Angel, you’re not paying for me to go to school.”

“Steve, the job for Beaumont paid one point five million,” she said it easily enough, then took a swallow of her coffee and Bucky jolted.

“Christ…you’re kidding?”

“Nope, and I’d have done it for free, but Beaumont has access to a discretionary black ops fund and he’ll pay Isaiah through that, and Isaiah will clean it up, take his cut, and take care of some of my expenses before banking the rest…the art job will be another ten million, or so. Maybe more.”

They both stopped and glanced at each other then stared at her. Nat’s smile was slow, and patient.

“You two are adorable, you do realize that it costs money to live in the world. I make enough to get by and support my safe houses among other hobbies. But I am the best at what I do and I charge top dollar for it.” She toasted them with her coffee cup.

“You don’t do assassinations anymore.” Bucky said flatly, and it wasn’t a question.

“It depends on who they want me to assassinate. And who the _they_ are in the equation.”

Steve frowned.

“If it’s a third world dictator ordering genocide—damn right I’ll take the job. But if it’s the Prime Minister of England, probably not. Might even make a counter offer by slipping the intel to MI-6, so they can prevent it.”

Something taut relaxed inside of him. Nat had her own code, and while it may not always align with his, it was solid.

“Okay,” Bucky said slowly, and then he resumed washing the dishes. Nat focused her assessing gaze on Bucky and Steve knew that look. Something in the way Bucky reacted tipped her off. Yeah, not telling Natasha was a bad idea.

“Isaiah knows what kind of jobs I’ll take and what kind I won’t. I’m not apologizing for how I survived. I used what they gave me.”

“That’s not what I meant Natalia,” Bucky said, blowing out a breath. “I helped you become that kind of a killer, I hate the idea of you still doing it if you don’t have to.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, James. They made a me killer a long time before we met.” The temperature in the room dropped and Steve put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder silencing his retort.

“Stop—both of you.” He pinned a look on Nat. “You both mean the same things, stop looking for a reason to slash at each other.”

She rose from the chair and drained her coffee. “I have some work to do, and then I’m supposed to meet Tony for lunch and to go over the intel. I think I’ll just go do that now…”

Fuck, he glared at Bucky as she turned to walk away. Instead of saying anything, Buck gripped the counter and bowed his head. Shoving away, Steve followed Nat to her room.

“Natasha…”

She sighed. “I’m not mad.”

“No, you’re disappointed and you’re worried,” he told her quietly. “That’s worse than mad.”

Folding her arms, she faced him. “Something’s eating away at him.”

“Provoking him isn’t going to help.”

“I don’t think I was the one provoking.” She raised her brows.

Steve wasn’t impressed and he folded his arms and stared her down. Because while she wasn’t wholly wrong, she also wasn’t wholly right.

“Fine,” she muttered and blew out a breath. “I stopped anyway. I do have some work to do. Hopefully we can figure this stuff out before you have any more close calls with it.”

Dropping his arms, Steve crossed the room and placed his hands on her shoulders. Then he slid a finger under the chain around her neck, his dog tags were nestled right between her breasts and it gave him a small thrill to realize she continued to wear them. “He’s going to be fine,” he assured her, and he meant it. Bucky was struggling with whatever he remembered, but he was here with them and they would keep him grounded. They’d be there.

The corner of her mouth kicked up. “Well, he has the most stubborn super soldier in the world on his side.”

“And the most intelligent and cunning woman I know who just happens to be a super spy.” Then he laughed. “Although arguably, you’re a super soldier, too.”

“I’m not a soldier, Rogers,” she said with a lazy smile. “I just work with them.”

Cupping her face, he nuzzled a kiss to her lips, then murmured, “He’s really going to be okay Angel, just give him some time.”

“If it starts to go sideways, promise you’ll tell me?” She searched his eyes as though seeking an answer, or maybe just confirming he would tell her the truth.

“I promise,” he said easily enough. “I won’t let him fall. Not this time.”

A shudder went through him, and it was Nat’s turn to hug him and he held on as she squeezed him fiercely.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he whispered against her ear, trying to not think about Bucky falling from the train. He’d already told him this wouldn’t be Azzano all over again, he wasn’t just going to let him brush him off. If he needed time to sort things out, fine, but he didn’t get to do it in a vacuum.

“Me too,” she said with a little laugh, then pulled away. “I’d rather just hang out here all day…”

“But you want to solve the Roxxon problem for us and you have training with Parker today.”

“Yeah,” she tilted her chin up. “I like having something to do—to be useful.”

“You’re always useful…and valued, and wanted…but do you take vacations?” They’d circled back to his earlier thought.

A little shrug. “I used to go out to Clint’s place, visit the kids…mostly when I was recovering, but a couple of times just for the holidays.”

“Think about vacation. Think about where you’d like to go—just us—you, me, and Buck. I know you’re not ready for the house idea…” He held up a hand. “And I get the whys, even if you understand why I wanted one. But maybe a compromise. A vacation, where the three of us can just get away.”

“Where do you want to go?” She tilted her head as she grabbed her backpack, and slung the strap over her shoulder. Her laptop and data tablet were inside.

“Somewhere warm,” Bucky called from the other room.

She smirked. “So—skiing?” The dancing smile in her eyes made Steve laugh.

“Wherever you want to go, Angel.”

“Okay…well you think about it, too. Let’s say we all make a list of three places, and then see what we come up with…”

“List…hell.” He snapped his fingers, because he’d had it for days and kept forgetting. “I have something for you.” Pivoting, he returned to the living room and pulled a small cedar box off the shelf and flipped it open. Inside lay Lila’s letter to her. “Clint gave me this the other day—but there was just so much going on and then you were out of town…but here.”

He handed her the letter and she stared at it. A small smile curving her lips. “She wrote me…”

“Yes, and she made Clint swear he’d get it to you.”

Nat hugged the letter to her chest and gave him the most gorgeous smile. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I’m just the lousy mailman.”

“Well, lousy mailmen get kisses too.” Then pressed one to his cheek, before brushing another over his lips. “Thank you—for everything.”

“You’re welcome, Angel.”

In the kitchen, Buck had finished washing the dishes and had switched to drying but he slowed when she crossed over to him. He dipped his head easily to meet her kiss.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice low but it still carried.

“No, doll. I’m being an ass. Forgive me?”

“Hmm…” She made a show of considering it. “I’ll think about it…maybe I’ll get more flowers out of the deal.”

It was exactly the right thing to say, the tension in the room popped and Bucky laughed. “You can have whatever you want, zvezda moya.”

“Good,” she said with a hip bump and then she was on her way to the elevator, bare feet a little reddened around the toes still from her dancing. “Behave boys, if I’m not back by eight, send someone to rescue me.”

“From Stark or Spider-Punk?” Bucky called.

Nat pivoted in the elevator, and grinned. “Probably.” Then the doors closed and Bucky’s smile faded, as did his good cheer.

He glanced at Steve, “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, just let’s get it figured out soon. She already knows something is up. Lying to her is only going to make it worse.” And he’d already made himself complicit by trying to distract her to give Bucky some time.

“I will—now tell me what you got planned for date number three,” he said picking up a plate to dry it. “You’ve already knocked it out of the park, twice, I figure at this rate, the bases will be loaded.” It was almost too light, too forced.

“You still okay with me seeing her?” He wasn’t backing down anymore than Bucky was, but he said he’d remembered everything and that could have changed.

Bucky hesitated, then said, “It’s—it’s taking me a minute. A part of me wants to say hell no, get the hell away from her. She’s mine.”

The possessiveness in the words sent a ripple of warning over him, and Steve had to physically force himself to relax. Those weren’t fighting words.

Then Bucky glanced at him. “But the rest of me knows how good you two are for each other, and I’m not going to fight you Steve. I won’t let you ever hurt her. I won’t let anyone hurt her, not me, not you—not her. I’m always going to choose her.” Conviction rang in every word. “If I get to be a little too possessive, feel free to smack me. God knows she will.”

At his crooked grin, Steve chuckled. “Don’t know what we did to deserve a dame like her…”

“Not a damn thing,” Bucky said. “Just a pair of thick micks turned paddy soldiers who got kissed by a lot more than luck.”

Steve shook his head. It had been a while. “So you still want to hear about my plans?”

“Hell yes, tell me what you’re going to do to put a smile on her face.” He set the last plate on the counter, and tossed the towel over his shoulder. “Looks like you might need to give me some pointers…”

Snorting, Steve shook his head. “Not likely.”

“Eh, you’re on date number three, I haven’t even managed to take her on date number one…” Then his expression changed.

“This time, Buck,” he reminded him. “You haven’t taken her on a date this time.”

“Never could take her on dates back then,” Bucky said. “We never had that kind of time…want to change that.”

“Then you will,” he said. “I’ll help…still want to hear the idea?”

“Stop bein’ melodramatic and spill already.”

So Steve told him, and by his second sentence, Bucky was laughing and shaking his head. When he finished, Buck just said. “Damn. Not going to be able to top that.”

“Don’t need to top it,” Steve argued. “Just be you. I think that’s all she wants.”

“And you’re treating her right,” Bucky said, then added. “I’m going to go talk to Friday about that research. You good?”

“Yeah—I should head out to the Compound.” He made a face.

“Why? You have training today?”

Steve shook his head.

“Then take the day, it’s not all on you Stevie. You gotta look after you, too—maybe we can spar later?” Bucky paused. “How long is Barton in PT?”

“A couple of hours, most days. Depends on how he’s feeling. He’s been pushing it on both sides, but I get it. He doesn’t want to lose any muscle tone in his arms…why?”

“Let’s grab him later, too. We can hit the shooting range or something.”

Steve read right between those lines, Bucky wanted an excuse to talk to Clint about something. “Sounds good.”

After Bucky disappeared into his room, Steve headed over to the sofa and grabbed one of his sketchpads. Then he thought about the classes Nat mentioned and tapped a finger against the pad itself…maybe he could do a little research, too.

“Hey Friday, could you ask Clint to come to our floor after PT if he’s feeling up for it?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

“Thanks.”

“Friday—can you make me one of those holo screens…” It appeared before he’d even finished. “Thank you—what colleges are closest to us here and can I get a look at their course catalogs?”

Then he chuckled, maybe Nat would go back to school with him. Be kind of fun to hang out on a campus and just be people…

If they could ever just be people in public again.

His smile faded, and he dug his phone out of his pocket. Then before he could overthink it, he sent a message to Sam to ask if he’d heard from Sharon about the position. Steve hadn’t but that didn’t mean anything, Sharon definitely didn’t owe him an update. But if Tony was right—and he was more often than not—then Sharon could be integral to get Nat reinstated, then they could do all those things and she could be back on the team, feeling useful, where she wanted to be.

Where _he_ wanted her to be.


	31. Coaching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat works with Tony and trains with Peter

**Chapter Thirty-One**

**Coaching**

**Tony**

 

 

He’d rolled out of bed and into the shower when Friday announced Natasha was on her way up. The coffee maker had started brewing, he could almost smell the seductive allure of caffeine calling to him as he shut the water off and wrapped a towel around his waist. It took him a couple of minutes to clean up his shave and to trim his goatee. A fast comb through his hair, and a dime-sized amount of fixer would keep most of it where it dried.

Satisfied, he toweled off and made sure he had on some antiperspirant because otherwise he would smell like road kill before the day was over. Dressed, he jogged down the stairs and smirked. Red had taken over the sofa and had her laptop open on the coffee table, a data tablet next to it, and a holo screen up with his reports.

“Sorry, am I interrupting? Or are we still in my penthouse?” He said by way of greeting.

“Some of us work for a living,” she retorted. “And you said lunchtime, not my fault you were still in bed.”

It was just after eleven, but he didn’t comment on the timing or his near almost unheard of eight hours of sleep. There wasn’t an ounce of judgment in her voice, so he just let it go. Maybe she’d needed a break from the super twins or more likely just wanted to get to work. He filled a mug with coffee, and then eyed where she was sitting. No mug in evidence, so he grabbed a second one and filled it for her.

Fortunately, she drank it black like he did so he could just steal hers if she didn’t want it. Carrying both over to the living room, he set hers on the table next to the sofa then motioned her to scoot over. Amusingly enough she pushed up with her legs, stood, and then sank back down on the cushion next to the one she’d occupied without looking away from…a letter she was reading.

“Going analog with the research?” He leaned over as if to take one of the pages, and she smacked his hand. “Ouch…”

“You don’t like to be handed things,” she said as if reminding him.

“Funny, I was going to take it, it’s not the same thing…” Then he paused at her stare. “Or…maybe it is and I’ll butt out. What is it?”

“A letter from Lila,” she told him. “Now shh.”

It was three pages and the writing, while a little sloppy, filled every inch of each page. Tony shook his head and sipped his coffee, then looked at the holo screen. “You read through the reports on CQ-A and CQ-D?”

“Read them, not totally understood them,” she responded, as she turned to the next page of her letter. “They make it sound like CQ-D is controllable, but anything that melts down cooling rods and causes explosions is not what I would call controllable.”

“If you can control the yield of the detonations, maybe—but their data indicates once a chain reaction ignites…nothing they do stops it.”

She glanced up from her letter. “The first one ran off an ounce sized sample for six weeks, right?”

“Right.”

“But every other one, lasted less and less time?”

Tony frowned, and he switched the screens and then lined up the test results. “We’re missing a few—and they’re noticeable based on the start and finish test dates.”

They were. After the initial six week test meltdown, they began subsequent tests within forty-eight hours, but in the last three weeks, when the longest CQ-D test lasted sixty-one hours and decreased to just under twenty-two hours, there were three full days missing.

“But the pattern says they last a shorter amount of time every time,” Natasha tilted her head. “Then the cascade failure begins…did they track exactly what happens that begins the cascade?” She set her letter to the side and picked up her coffee.

“In a manner of speaking, not that I find their method of record keeping highly inspiring nor their monitoring systems.” He switched the screens to bring up the chemical analysis, then highlighted a DNA strand.

“That’s…”

“It’s close, but it’s not quite carbon based—it has carbon in it, like it’s assimilated it, but it’s a crystalline structure at the root.” He flipped it around. “Now watch, I’m going to speed the process up—this was the monitoring detail from the primary research station test.”

The nucleotide chains began to slip apart, then split. The fissures in the chains ignited, and then it was literally a chain reaction releasing all of the potential energy they had been harvesting until it overloaded everything, but by then—it was destroyed.

“It reminds me of extremis,” Tony told her. “I’ve reviewed this a dozen times. He flipped the screens to bring up all the files he had on Killian and Maya’s mad little science project. “See here—the chains break apart, then—boom.” He spread his hands out miming the kaboom of the explosion. “Similar chain separations, but where this stuff…” He froze the image on CQ-D at the time of the chain slip. “…requires this first slip to begin the ignition chain, Extremis…” He magnified it and slowed it down. “…builds the explosive potential by literally shattering one, into the next, so that the concussive and explosive force magnifies—which then results in big boom, that can put itself back together…sometimes.”

“That’s really comforting,” Red commented, her tone dry as hell. “But you found a way to neutralize Extremis—would it work with this stuff?”

“Well, we could try that,” Tony said slowly, but he didn’t have to elaborate because her sigh said it all.

“We just need to lay hands on some of it. We have the CQ-A and not the CQ-D.”

“Yep.” Tony leaned back against the sofa and mirrored her pose as she sipped her coffee and stared at the replays of slow motion destruction on the screens. “We’re not playing with CQ-A until we can shut CQ-D down.”

“What happens if they combine the two? You know that whole—you can’t fight against your self thing.”

“With Loki’s staff of destiny and the cosmic cube?” Tony snorted and shook his head. “No idea. They don’t appear to have tried to do that.”

Silence stretched between them and he glanced over to find Nat raising her eyebrows.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t bullshit,” he said before she could comment. “Just they don’t have any records of what happened.”

“Which means it was probably bad.”

Tony nodded. “Really bad.”

“Epically bad enough that one of their people reached out to you and smuggled those samples out…but he only got out the CQ-A.”

Despite how genuinely terrifying that stuff was, he hadn’t included the…

“The CQ-A takes over things—it has the ability to replicate. The CQ-D goes boom.”

“One’s an ignition, the other is the bomb…nuclear bombs are just—plutonium that have to be exploded by detonating something else. The material is radioactive and feeds the bomb…”

“Red…don’t explain science to me.” He grinned but she still flipped him off, and it made him laugh. “But—you’re not wrong. So the guy likely didn’t send the CQ-D with it because he didn’t want the A to ignite—and really, could they have named it something more interesting?”

“Like Mark 49?”

“You wound me.”

“You’ll live.” She kicked a foot forward to rest her toes on his coffee table. Well, at least someone was getting comfortable; she was hanging out in bare feet. “Why are you staring at my feet?”

“You need a pedicure,” he said. The big toe on her left foot looked a little bruised. Maybe from dancing. “The thing is, I can’t get an accurate spectrograph reading on the CQ-A in the containment vessels. It holds them steady, but—it doesn’t let me extract anything. I’m working on putting together the equipment to do that. In the meanwhile, the CQ-D would be easier to work with because…”

“…it doesn’t eat people, it just explodes them?”

He smirked, and met her wry gaze. “Something like that. But the CQ-D only explodes when they try to harness it as a power source, if I can get some and not plug it in, then I could spend some time analyzing it.”

“And these geniuses didn’t do that?” She motioned to the files.

“Not as far as Friday and I can find,” Tony muttered, then drained the rest of his coffee.

“Friday—how many of these files have been doctored?” Something venturing on frustration edged her tone.

“Without having another set of files to model their system on, I would have to guess that there are several key pieces of data that have been excised, primarily in regards to CQ-D including field tests, and laboratory experiments.”

The problem with the substances is they were found in roughly the same areas, usually within several meters of each other, but nothing in the records indicated cross contamination.

“Does it list where the CQ-D is being stored? The stuff I saw in Ponchatoula had to be the A because it was going after that technician.”

“The files, as you are aware, Ms. Romanoff were compartmentalized by individual site. The Ponchatoula records do not offer any insight to the projects being conducted at their other facilities, however, cross referencing shipments, dates, and specific employees with regard to the CQ-D experiments leads me to the conclusion, that the CQ-D may be housed in Pasadena at a facility listed only as Isodyne Energy.”

Red sighed. “Of course it is…”

“What’s up with Isodyne? Other than being a defunct corporation gobbled up by Roxxon in the 50s?”

“Zero matter experiments in the late 40s,” she said grimly. “I’ve been there…if they’ve repurposed the place, I can probably find a way in…”

“Hey,” he said, sitting forward. “You’re not going in after this stuff. We haven’t even decided if we need to get it.” If anyone went for it it would be him— _in_ his armor. “Just dial it back there 007…”

“Those are fictional British agents.”

“Fine, Scotland Yard…”

“Still British.”

He smirked. “Virginia Hall.”

“CIA.”

“Mata Hari.”

“Dutch.”

Tony grinned. “Sei Pen.”

“Japanese.”

“Vichenza.”

She rolled her eyes, and stood with her empty coffee cup. “Sicilian, and not a spy so much as a gun for hire.”

“You’re good at this,” Tony said with a laugh as she wandered into the kitchen, but he was still turning the plans over in his head when his gaze drifted to the letter.

“The point is, you need to find a way to neutralize CQ-A, but you can’t really examine it safely. So the next best thing would be CQ-D…”

“But we don’t want to bring that near the CQ-A and we need to find enough of a sample that we could lay hands on that isn’t going to destabilize and take out whoever goes to get it.” He picked up the pages and unfolded them. The childish handwriting was actually pretty neat if blocky.

 

_Dear Auntie Nat,_

_We miss you. We are visiting Daddy and we hoped you would be here. Mommy says you can’t come see us for a while…_

All at once, he set the letter down. That felt a little too personal.

“Then if I can get the CQ-D and take it somewhere else…or next best thing, get into their system and get a chemical analysis. Something you can work with.”

“That’s going to be a big fat no,” Tony said, twisting to look over the back of the sofa at her only to find her standing right there. She reached past him to take her letter and just gave him a look as she circled back. “No,” he continued, as she set a bottle of water next to his cup before unscrewing a second as she dropped onto the sofa. “You already had one run in thanks to some hacker screwing with their systems. I’d like to avoid a second run in.”

“That hacker is probably cooling his heels in an FBI interrogation room if the NSA hasn’t swooped in to hire him,” she told him after she took a drink. “I got his name and ran his background. He’s an environmental hacktavist…he really was just trying to shut down their facility and had no idea what he almost did. So—dangerous, but—not guilty.”

“And you did him a favor by turning him into the FBI?”

“No, I’m saving other people’s lives because his good intentions could have gotten a lot of people killed.” She glanced at the letter.

“You know I haven’t given up on clearing you, right?” He swiped away the holo screens.

“I know…it’s hard to explain to a six—no seven year old.” She folded the letter up. “And we have other things to worry about right now.”

“So we pack it away to think about later…yes we probably need to get some CQ-D but not right this second. You remember what season we were on?” He glanced at the ceiling. “Friday, how long until our usual order from Mama Melrose gets here?”

“About ten minutes, Mr. Stark. Security will go over it before they put it on the elevator. You also asked me to remind you that Colonel Rhodes wanted you to attend the formal dinner this evening.”

“Jeremy Fletcher.” He groaned. “What time am I supposed to be there?”

“Colonel Rhodes said they were expecting you at four, so that you would hopefully be there by seven.”

“Which means you’re going to get there around eight-thirty or nine.” Red retrieved her laptop and curled into the corner of the sofa with it in her lap. “And we were on season four.”

“And I’ll be getting there at nine-thirty—” Tony made a face. He did hate to be predictable. “—want to get out the veil and join me schmoozing?”

“Not really,” she answered, without glancing up from the screen. “Showing up at an event loaded with politicians, billionaires, tech magnets, and military brass even in disguise sounds a little ballsy even for me…”

He grinned. “But you’re tempted.”

“Tempted? No.” She glanced at him and shrugged. “But I can’t say it wouldn’t be fun…but still no. It’s not worth the risk…”

“Fine, I’ll go mock the guests on my own.”

Natasha chuckled and shook her head.

“Roll it Friday,” he said and the screen lowered and the opening credits began. The fact Natasha liked the show and would indulge him dated back to some of those late nights when neither of them could sleep.

“You think it ever occurred to people to stop inviting Jessica Fletcher or any of her family members to their parties?” Despite the idle question, she didn’t look up from her laptop screen.

“One would think, but apparently she was the hottest ticket wherever she went. The fact she gets killers to confess when a good stiff wind would knock her down is what always amazes me…”

“That part isn’t hard, she’s a master manipulator. Her age, and her demeanor promote trustworthiness, and alignment with a grandmother or mother figure, but she’s cool so she doesn’t encourage too much warmth…”

“Cool? She’s always smiling and going to parties…”

Natasha lifted her gaze and pointed at the screen where Mrs. Fletcher was hugging a girl. “Look at the body language Tony, she holds herself away, she isn’t hugging so much as accepting the hugs. She also never closes her eyes, she’s always looking around as she takes in the hugs, she maps the room, she’s thinking about entrances and exits, she assesses people, what they’re wearing, what they’re saying, and she catalogs each interaction…she kind of reminds me of a benign Madame B—”

“Pause.” Tony sat forward and stared at her. “Are you serious?” Horror crept through him. He used to badger her from time to time to sit down and watch a couple of episodes.

“What?” She blinked at him. “You think Madame B was always a horrible person?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t even a question. “She tortured you Red…”

“Yes, but she also trained me, taught me, molded me—she wasn’t a maniacal mustache twirling villain Tony…sometimes the most benign personalities hide the cruelest people. But it doesn’t bother me…”

“But I don’t want you to watch something that reminds you of…”

“The past, Tony. She’s the past. She’s dead. I know she is. And besides, it entertains me that Cabot Cove has to be the murder capital of the United States by sheer number of bodies dropped per how many people live there and no one ever looks askance at the kind older woman…”

She had a point, but still… “You sure?”

“Have you ever made me do anything I didn’t want to do?” The raised eyebrows dared him to challenge her and he smirked.

“Not recently. Fine—but if it ever does bug you, just, turn it off.”

“Yep…”

“Boss, the food is here.”

Saved by the arrival of tortellini and chicken alfredo.

Ninety minutes later, they were in Tony’s lab and Nat had the plans to the Pasadena facility up. “Okay, so we know they have that stuff in Ponchatoula. Based on the pressure tanks they’re keeping it in and the cooling systems—liquid nitrogen apparently is a very effective deterrent.” They’d noticed, the worm had been able to lift one of those reports for him of the aftermath including the fact the sample had been irreparably destroyed. “Then keeping the secondary one half a country away makes sense…”

“Except how the hell did it get in the arctic ice to begin with? Ding. Ding. Ding. Already on that Red—and this is as much as Friday and I can tell.” He changed the screen up and pulled the map to show the drilling region. “This is where the primary samples were found. They exhausted their resources here, before tracking another source about a hundred miles north and east of that position. Most of the other deposits were significantly smaller—though there were some…” Tony switched the screen again. “Here off the coast of Norway.”

Nat frowned. “Go back to the first location.”

Friday obliged, and Nat drummed her nails against the smart table, her face almost unreadable except for the deeply thoughtful frown between her brows.

“You know something…” It wasn’t a guess.

“Maybe.”

“Want to share it with the class?”

“No because it’s speculation at best.” She straightened and glanced at her laptop. The funny thing was, despite all of his equipment and upgrades, she preferred her little beast of a machine. Then again, she’d let him add memory to it and a new processing chip so it was definitely capable.

“Then let’s speculate Red…it can’t be any worse than chasing our tails for a way to shut this stuff down…” Across the room, the black liquid in its containment grew more agitated. The shifting substance made them both look.

“That area of the North Atlantic is where your father found the Tesseract. I think.” That snagged his attention. “It was in one of the unredacted files I read after Loki took Clint.”

“Friday, access my private server, pull up Dad’s files on the tesseract.” Then he slanted a look at her. “He kept more than a few to himself and out of SHIELD’s hands, he called it the lunchbox—so he could only access it off site.”

“Got it Boss, the coordinates are close, about two miles off. But by nautical terms it’s still in the same region.”

“What about drift? Is it possible the currents could have moved the Tesseract around along the ocean bottom?” The idea gave Tony a chills.

“You’re thinking exposure to the Tesseract did something…”

“Or changed something. It opened a damn portal Tony—who knows what exposure to it in a raw environment could do—or—and this is a stretch—or there’s debris from a meteorite, and the Tesseract did something to it.”

A headache pounded behind his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know…I was really glad to see that thing leave the planet.”

“Ditto. But even knowing this…” She spread her hands. “It still doesn’t tell us how to stop this stuff.” The liquid surged against its containment, like a tidal force pushed it toward them. “Tony?”

“Yeah, I see it. Friday, status on the containment fields?”

“They are running at ninety-four percent optimization.”

“94?” He swung around. “Has that been since the beginning or has it dropped?”

“It has decreased by two percent in the last twenty-four hours. Power balancing has compensated, but it is taking increasing levels to maintain integrity.”

That was not good. He had the containment fields running off an individualized ARC reactor, it should be able to maintain field integrity for decades. “What’s eating up the power, baby girl?”

Nat circled the table toward the liquid, and it surged again, altering direction this time as though it were splashing toward her.

“Red…”

She extended a hand and the trembling agitation in it redoubled, and then decreased as she pulled it away. Tony approached from the opposite side, but the liquid didn’t react. When she adjusted her position, it changed directions, like the stuff was following her or…

“Red, take two steps closer, but get ready to back right off.”

She nodded, and Tony activated his armor. He’d rather be safe than sorry—particularly because she wasn’t wearing any kind of suit.

“Friday, containment levels?”

“At ninety-two percent and holding steady.”

Red looked at him and her eyes said the same thing he was thinking.

“Do it,” he told her and she closed the distance on the containment units and the liquid plastered itself to the side, striking like it was magnetic sand, drawn right to her.”

“Containment level now eighty-five percent, recommend safety protocol Delta to be engaged.” Friday even sounded concerned.

“Other side of the room Red, go.” Tony shifted to get between her and the containment units, but as soon as she was a few feet away, the agitation slowed and then settled. “How close to that stuff were you in Louisiana?”

“Open air, but at least—thirty to forty feet between the height of the mezzanine and the actual distance between me and the tanks.”

He considered it, then her. “And no decon?”

She frowned… “Tony…”

“Let’s be cautious, shall we? That stuff is actually reacting to you in a way it hasn’t to me, and I know you’ve been everywhere and with…” Yeah he wasn’t going there. “Let’s just run a little looksee shall we?”

Red was fine. She hadn’t been exposed and she’d shown no symptoms. He was just being paranoid.

Almost two hours later, they stared at her test results and Tony shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Well, yay, maybe it just likes redheads.”

Tony wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t funny. He was running out of options with this stuff. What he needed was another mind to work on it. Peter was a smart kid, but he was a kid and letting him work on the armor equations, and helping him test it was one thing. This was something else entirely.

The armor wasn’t going to kill him.

“Ms. Romanoff, Mr. Parker has texted that he is on his way…”

Hell what time was it? Tony swiveled to look at the clock. They’d been at this for a while. As long as Nat stayed on the far side of the room, the liquid behaved, if she got within six feet of it, it began surging. He and Friday had reconfigured the fields and added a secondary arc reactor fueled field to the first as a precaution.

“Hey Red…” he called as she stood, stretching before grabbing her laptop and heading toward the door to his lab.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” He didn’t say it often enough to the people around him—especially the ones who took the time to help, even when he wasn’t always the easiest of people to deal with.

“For?” She eyed him.

“For giving a damn,” he said, and then because that ventured a little too close to the edge, he added, “And for being easy on the eyes while you do it.”

“You’re welcome,” she said without a chuckle or a teasing remark. “You should come down and train with Peter at some point.”

“Yeah, the kid needs…”

“I wasn’t talking about what the kid needs.” The quiet tone arrested him. “I’m talking about you, and the rest of the team. You used to train with us, but you weren’t always comfortable with the new team, especially when you were pulling away.”

And he’d been stepping back because after Ultron, he hadn’t quite trusted his own judgment. Pepper wanted him to, and he’d been trying, really—he had but the cracks were already there and the new guys—he didn’t know them.

“Tony, you got them back together, but they need to know you—not just the guy they have in their minds with his trademark snark and biting quips, and not the guy they fought against—but the guy who would go to the wall for them, and has been over and over.”

“Yeah, no.” He shook his head and turned back to his lab.

“Tony…”

“Red.”

“You don’t trust them either. Sam. Wanda. Lang. Maybe even Vision to an extent…”

“I don’t have a problem with Vision.”

“Except he’s not JARVIS, but he sounds like JARVIS, and he’ll never be JARVIS again.”

The pressure in his chest expanded, and he rubbed a hand against it. Almost missing the familiar feel of his ARC reactor. Despite the constant ache and pinch of it, he’d gotten used to it for the few years he’d had it.

“And that’s okay—it took me a long time to adjust to the new team, too. Staying away from them won’t make any of you more comfortable. They need to trust you, too. They need to be able to listen to you in the field. You and Steve are in a good place, yeah?”

He had to think about it, but… “Yeah. Rogers and I are okay.”

“And Clint?”

Turning, he met the quiet challenge in her eyes. “Yeah, Red. Clint and I are fine. He’s even getting some tinker time on new arrows, since it gives him something to alleviate the boredom while he’s recovering.”

“Thanks for getting him over here from the Compound.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome and before you ask—I’m not quite there with Barnes, but…he’s not so bad. At least not as bad as I used to think.” He could separate the two, maybe not emotionally yet, not fully yet; but intellectually he got the difference between Barnes and the Soldier.

“You need to foster that with the new team. Maybe bridge some of the troubled gaps from everyone who felt like they had to choose sides, show them you and Steve are getting along, and unite the Avengers…”

“Red, are you managing us?”

The curve of her mouth suggested a smile but she shrugged. “Just sharing my observations. Not talking, compartmentalizing, and keeping our distance got us into trouble before…”

“Got me into trouble,” he pointed out. “Got Steve in trouble. You saw it, you called it…”

“Not fast enough. Neither of you were wrong, but how we handled it…” She spread her hands. “But that was then. You have done so much to bring the team back together, but the last step Tony is you actually letting yourself be a part of the team. You’re not going to trust them right away, and they aren’t going to trust you.”

“Damn, you are always such a ray of sunshine.” Yet even as he rubbed the back of his neck, he appreciated the candor.

“You don’t like a lot of people, and you trust even less,” she said. “You’re never going to get to a point where you trust them as a team if you don’t learn to trust them as people and let them learn to trust you. That’s not safe in the field, you and I both know that.”

He frowned.

“Tony—when we all worked together in New York—we didn’t like each other, and most of us didn’t know each other well enough to trust. But we all knew how to get the job done. We let a common enemy unite us enough to put aside our differences.” She slipped her backpack strap over her shoulder. “Since then—most of the things that have divided us haven’t come from the outside.”

She wasn’t wrong. “I’ll work on it Red, but I’m not promising anything. They have reasons to hate me…”

“They have reasons to respect you, to be grateful to you, and even to like you. You’re not all that bad, you know.”

Folding his arms, he smirked. “Be careful Red, you sound almost sweet on me.”

“Perish the thought,” she drawled out the words. “So…you like Peter, and you almost kind of trust him. He’s crazy about you, and is dying for a chance to impress you. So consider him your easy audition for the rest of the team. Train with him at some point—and maybe go a few rounds with me in the ring.”

Tony barked out a laugh. “Yeah—no. You fight dirty.”

“As I recall,” she told him over her shoulder as she strolled out. “So do you and so does Happy.” She had a point, Happy had tried to punch her when she’d been looking at Tony to answer his question and not Happy. “I’ll check in with you later.”

“Sounds good,” he said with a wave to her back. Turning away from the door to his lab as it closed, he looked at the containment fields. The substance had gone completely silent. “Yeah, Banner…I could really use you right about now.”

He picked up the tray holding three vials of her blood, all she would consent to let him run some tests just to verify there was no other contamination—not that they’d found any. Passing the containment field, the leaping liquid toward him made him jerk to a halt. It hadn’t reacted like that to him before.

“Friday?”

“Yeah Boss?”

“Prepare a liquid nitrogen suspension and let’s move it into place. If that stuff breaches containment—flood it with liquid nitrogen and shut it down.”

He stored the blood, and then returned to his data tablet, and pulled up the equations Peter had been working on for the armor.

“Everything in place for Red?”

“Yes, Boss. Good to go.”

“All right, boys and girls, lock this down. We’re going downstairs for build mode.”

Tablet in hand, he sealed up his private lab and headed downstairs. It was time to test Peter’s numbers and see what he could come up with.

 

 

**Peter**

 

 

He ran all the way from the subway to the front doors of the Tower, before skidding and altering course to go around the corner. There were more tourists and a few protestors out front. Mr. Stark had told him to just avoid the crowds and use the side garage, Friday would open it.

Sure enough, as soon as he reached the entrance, it was sliding upward and he hit the ground and rolled underneath and it closed before it had risen more than a few inches, and then he was in the elevator and bouncing from foot to foot. It had been a week. A week since Natasha had grounded him and he’d been good. No patrols.

He’d also put together a report, and some statistics, and hopefully a convincing presentation to make his point where his patrols were concerned. It didn’t hurt that he’d found a perfectly recyclable DVD player on his way from school to the subway. He’d stuffed it in his backpack to take apart later. And maybe if he had time after training, he could work on Mr. Stark’s project. That had been pretty awesome the last three days, he’d really learned a lot.

The elevator opened and he bolted out, heading straight for the training rooms and had to catch the door when he swung it too hard, then skidded to a halt. The room was dark.

All at once he deflated. “Friday…didn’t Natasha say for me to come in today?”

“Yes, she did,” Natasha answered from right behind him and Peter leapt, then landed about ten feet away, his hands out and up slightly for balance and ready to block an attack.

Barefoot, wearing what looked like yoga pants and a tank top, Natasha didn’t seem all that threatening and yet the smile she wore had him flushing hot under the collar. “How do you _do_ that?” He _never_ heard her and he had enhanced senses. It shouldn’t be possible.

“Too much data,” she told him as she padded across the floor and motioned him toward the mats. “You’ve got heightened senses and reflexes, right?”

“Yeah,” he tracked her progress and followed her over.

“So you’re constantly being barraged with information—sights, sounds, smells—must be even worse at school.”

It wasn’t a question, but she wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, but that doesn’t tell me how you keep sneaking up on me.”

“Easy, you have to consciously block out the extra data or you’d probably get sensory overload. For the most part, I’m betting it’s become automatic, a self-defense mechanism.”

He shifted on his feet, then slipped off his backpack. “It was hard at first—used to be real loud and stuff, but I worked on it.”

“How did you work on it?”

She settled on the floor as graceful as a dancer and then leaned toward one of her feet, grasping it with her hand and stretching the leg.

Toeing off his shoes, he left them on the wood floor next to the mat and then nearly slipped on his socks as he padded over to her, backpack in hand. “I just—blocked it out. I mean, it’s impossible to listen to a lecture in class if I can hear everyone breathing, and trust me you don’t want to hear that much in the guy’s bathroom—or the locker room or really…any room with guys in it.” He kind of trailed off as she raised an eyebrow.

Dropping to sit cross-legged in front of her, he shrugged out of his hoodie, then unzipped his backpack.

“Anyway, so—yeah. I had to focus a lot, you know block it all out. Music helps. Exercise helps. Homework helps…”

“So anything that preoccupies your mind?” She tipped her head to the other side as she switched sides she stretched. Her legs were almost perfectly in the splits and she could really reach.

Maybe he shouldn’t have worn jeans.

Pulling out some papers, he fumbled it around until he found the plastic sealed and bound report he’d prepared. “Mostly, yeah. If I get nervous or there’s too much going on—then I can’t and it’s overwhelming.”

“That’s why you quit band. Too much noise.”

He winced. “Yeah.”

“And why you avoid sporting events? School dances?”

His face heated. “Well…sort of, but yeah.”

“How are you controlling it when you’re on patrol?”

“Well I don’t—I want to listen then. I want to be able to hear someone scream a couple of streets over, I want to be able to catch sight of them running away…I need those senses.”

“But how are you doing it?” She straightened and faced him, and he held up the report, but didn’t say anything.

“I…”

“You?” She prompted.

“I wrote a report,” he said, then winced.

“About how you handle your senses?” The absolute lack of expression gave him nothing to play off of.

“Not exactly—it’s more about my patrols and why they’re good and what I do on them, and I made lists of things that I’ve done and why they’re important, and the last page is an index of the crime blotter up through day before yesterday of things I could have helped with, but couldn’t because I was…not supposed to patrol.”

His ears burned and he fought the urge to hide the report. Why did he write a report like it was a school assignment? How stupid was he? This was the Black Widow? And he wrote her an annotated report?

She stretched out her hand and he had no choice but to give it to her. Then he looked down at his hands and then at his backpack and anywhere but at her.

“Peter,” she said, her tone unchanged from before. “How do you control your senses when you’re on patrol?”

“I just—do it. Does it matter how?”

“Yes, would you like me to demonstrate for you?” That seemed almost too easy.

“That would be great!”

She motioned for him to stand, and then she set his report to the side and walked three steps away, then held up her hands, palms facing him and relaxed her knees. She actually looked more like she was going to take off running than holding a stance, but what did he know?

“Hit me.”

“What?” He stared at her. They’d sparred that first day, and it had not ended well for him. But he still didn’t want to hit her.

“Hit me,” she repeated patiently.

“Natasha…”

“Peter. Hit me.” She curled her right hand in a beckoning motion. “C’mon, hit me.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“If you don’t even attempt to hit me, you can continue to be grounded from patrol for another week.”

Bouncing to the side, he rushed at her. “Okay…” But even pulling his punch, he never even got close to her, she caught his arm, pushed his hit to the side then pivoted and her foot slammed into his back and he stumbled forward. He caught himself before he fell on his face, but then turned to face her.

“Again.” She’d moved to face him once more and he tried not to rush, but he used his left hand this time, and struck only to have her turn the hit aside and flow around him and he got another kick this time to the back and he went down on one knee.

“Again.”

And they repeated this like ten times, and with his pride smarting as much as his ass, he scowled. “What’s the point of this?”

“First of all, you’re not actually trying to hit me. You’re a lot faster than you’re moving. Secondly, I can tell you each step of what I’m doing, so you can understand and compensate for it, then maybe repeat it. But I want you to tell me first.”

She faced him, hands forward in the same position.

“Go slow, verbally walk me through the steps of what I did.”

“But I didn’t see it all…”

“You saw enough, and you felt some, you heard others, and you may not get it all. But let’s give it a shot.”

“Okay…so I come at you like this…”

“Like what, let’s be specific. You start forward on your left foot, all your weight onto the ball and your right leg in motion to follow forward.” Well that example helped.

“Yeah, okay—on my left foot, my right arm back, and I am coming at you, when my right foot is solid, I swing and you push your right palm forward against my wrist like you’re pushing me aside, but there’s almost no actual…” he paused in the mid motion with her hand at his wrist and eyed her left hand. “You’re not actually pushing.”

She shook her head.

“You’re moving, and you’re just using your hands to guide me past you and using my own momentum against me, then you spin and kick—but your momentum is stable while mine is uneven.”

Natasha grinned and they both straightened.

“Now—close your eyes, and imagine you’re on a rooftop, you’re about to fire your webbing—how are you using your senses…”

It took him forty minutes, but he found the thread of it. How he measured the distance by eyeballing it, and that he could calculate the physics of where to land the webbing to give him the maximum swing. How he listened not only for screams, but the sound of vehicles, people, and even flying debris. A plastic bag in the face was not going to help him see where he’s going. Then there’s the feel of the roof beneath his feet, the webbing as he shoots and catches it, and there’s a distinctive tension when he knows it’s attached.

So many micro pieces that he hadn’t even realized he was doing.

“That’s—awesome.” He spread his hands. “I mean, I knew I could do it, I just didn’t realize I was filtering so much, you know except when it gets really loud or there’s an explosion or like when that vulture guy dragged me way up high—I got dizzy and I couldn’t focus and there was nothing around to shoot a web toward, and then the chute opened and I was suddenly falling—it was so much.”

“Breathe, Peter,” she cautioned him.

He laughed. “Sorry I get excited.”

“I’ve noticed. Okay, go change into something you can move in. We’re going to do some more sparring and then we’re going to work on how you can isolate your senses one at a time.”

Hesitating, he frowned and then said, “Because sometimes my senses can get in my way.”

“Yes they can, and if you are getting too much data from one…”

“It would overwhelm me.”

“Yep.”

That was a lot. “So you want me to learn how to fight blind and deaf?”

“Something like that, but more so you can understand what input you need or don’t need. It’s always about survival. You can’t win anything if you don’t live.”

That was a humbling though. “I’ll be right back.”

It didn’t take him long to change, and when he jogged back into the training room, she was standing in the middle of the mat reading his report and he nearly tripped. She made a twirling motion. “Run a couple of laps and warm up, then go over to the speed bag and actually hit it since you won’t hit me.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then decided against it. She was _reading_ his report. Holy crap. The gym didn’t really have a running track, but there was open space on the edges, so he started jogging. After his first circuit, she called out, “I said _run_ Peter. Is that how fast you run when someone is chasing you?”

“No?” He answered then pushed himself to run a little faster. After his third circuit, he slowed at the speed bags and then eyed them then his fists.

Arms raised, he didn’t even make his first swing before she said, “Wrap your hands.” She was at a bench and his report sat right next to her. He jogged over and she wrapped his hands, explaining how to cushion the knuckles.

“I heal,” he told her. “I mean I can get pretty banged up, but I heal pretty quick.”

“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you don’t need to practice form.” She held up her right hand. “I’ve had this broken before in a fight, I could push past the pain and keep going but I could also compensate with my left. I train a lot, now imagine I tear my hands while training and then go into a fight, I’ve already handicapped myself.”

Huh. He hadn’t thought about that. Then again, he didn’t train a lot and he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear that so he just nodded. The corner of her mouth quirked and she shook her head. She wrapped her hands and then shooed him over to the bag.

“Okay—now, I’ll brace it. You hit it. Remember, Cap hits these bags, so just put your weight into it.”

Putting his weight into it meant a series of corrections, where he put his foot, how he swung, alternating between jabs, swings, uppercuts, and downblows. Then she made him lead with his left, consistently and his arm actually began to burn, then she let him trade to his right and it was sloppier than his left had been and that confused the hell out of him.

“You’re right handed, so you have to concentrate when you use your left. That means you’re focusing more on what you’re doing than when you use your right.” The comment surprised him. “So do it again, slow it down so you can get the feel for it.”

He alternated again. The left jab, swing, and uppercut he had down. Then he switched to his right. The first couple of times it didn’t land or feel quite the same. But he slowed it down, and then concentrated and by the third punch, it landed where he wanted it.

The rhythm of the hits was easy to fall into and he started laughing because even with the burn from his shoulders to his biceps, it actually felt pretty good. When she called a halt, he laughed. “I did it.”

“Yes…” she sounded amused, then jerked her head over to the mats. “C’mon. Let’s do a few more of those, only this time. I’m going to be trying to hit you.”

“Yeah, okay.” He bounded over. It was better when she tried to hit him, even when she landed she couldn’t break his bones. “So, do I palm—” He barely dodged her jab, and then she was after him again, and it was all defense, and playing keep away.

“You can hit me back any time here,” she chided him, but she didn’t slow her assault, and he was half running to keep her away, and when she suddenly went low and cut his feet out from under him, he dove over, tumbled and came up, catching her fist and he turned her hand out and then she rolled with the motion and he threw her.

“Shit!” He covered his mouth as she rebounded tumbled over and back to her feet and then held her hands up.

“Finally!”

She eyed him with a grin and he stared, almost slack jawed. “I could have…”

“Yes, you can. So let’s do that some more. Come on Peter, put your money where your mouth is kid…” Then she was coming at him again, and for some reason, it felt like she was faster. He blocked, parried, and turned her fists away, and she still landed a few blows. Every time she changed it up and he reacted though, she seemed even more pleased. Then she was closing in to his strikes, and turning them away, and when he went flying, he rolled with it and caught her as she tackled over him and then twisted to try and avoid it, but she had him and then his arm was behind his back.

“You can break this hold,” she said and bent his arm a little higher.

“But I could hurt you…”

“And I’m hurting you right now,” she told him. “So break out of it.”

He frowned as the pinch on his shoulder increased and he pushed down, he was stronger, fighting her grip and then he crouched, and jump twisted, taking her with him and he reversed the grip and she hit the mat and he let her go as he backed off.

“Yes,” she exhaled, with a whuff of breath and pushed upward. Her hair clung to her face and she was sweating even more than he was. “Excellent.”

“Really?” He straightened.

“Yes, excellent. You can’t be afraid to use your strength. Just like all your other senses, you need to know when to use it and when to hold back. How much to use to get the job done, but if you concentrate so hard on not hurting others that you let them hurt you? That’s not right either.” Sitting up, she held up her hand. “One more lesson for today.”

“Okay,” he panted and put his hands on his hips. “What’s that?”

“Eyes closed.”

He snapped them shut.

“Tell me everything that’s in this room and where it is in relation to you.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Just describe the room. You’ve been in here for a couple of hours, Peter. What’s here and where is it?”

Okay, he could do this. “You’re three feet in front of me on the mat, the bench is another five feet beyond the edge of the mat behind you, my backpack and the report are there. My shoes are to my left at the edge of the mat. Behind me are the speed bags. In the southwest corner are the weight machines. In the northwest corner is a mirror and a bar. There is a ring to the north east corner, and…doors to the main building, not far from that and doors to the locker room behind the bench.” He used his hands to motion to those.

“Anything else in here?” She hadn’t told him to open his eyes so he didn’t.

“There’s the treadmills and elliptical but I would think that’s part of the weight equipment.”

“Nothing else? You’ve identified everything present?”

The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he frowned. Spinning, he turned and opened his eyes, but nothing was there. Glancing around, he twisted to where Natasha sat, one eyebrow raised. “I thought I had—but I feel like I missed something.”

She pointed a single finger up and he tilted his head to see Iron Man standing in the rafters.

“Mr. Stark?”

“No, Mr. Parker,” Friday said, and the armor’s faceplate opened. “Ms. Romanoff asked me to place the armor here for a lesson.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Since you arrived, kid,” Tony’s voice came over the speakers. “You just cost me a bottle of bragging points. Red said you wouldn’t notice me and I defended you.”

“But you weren’t moving or anything…” He raked a hand through his hair, he’d been doing so well and then…dammit.

“The point of that, Peter,” Natasha said as she rose gracefully and retrieved some towels from one of the cabinets. She tossed one to him before wiping her face with a second. “Always be aware of your surroundings. There are several vantage points up there, if you’re so focused on what’s down here, you could miss an attack from up there.”

“That’s a lot to keep track of, Natasha.” Not that he was complaining, but he did feel kind of stupid.

“But you have the ability to track a lot more, and once I pointed out you might have missed something—you reacted. You knew something was there.”

He had, but… “I still didn’t see it at all when we were talking or practicing or anything.”

“Well, next time, what are you going to do?”

“Look up.” He told her.

“And?”

“Keep my eyes and ears open, trust my instincts…and look over my shoulder.” She’d told him that before.

“You’ll have to think about it for a while, just like you had to think about it with throwing a punch or an uppercut, or learning to block the hit and move it aside. This…” She circled a finger to the room, then toward him. “It’s all about learning to do it, then making it second nature. You learned to block out all the data your mind feeds you—now you need to learn to process it differently. When you walk in a room, you clock who is in it, what they are doing, and what potential threats might be there. It doesn’t mean you’re going to do anything about it—but it gives you more than split-second to react if something goes wrong.”

“I’ll work on it…” His shoulders slumped. He should have known this. When he ran patrols, he went up and came from above, why did he not assume other threats would be there?

“Okay, that’s enough for tonight…you can go work on stuff with Tony if you want or do homework…”

“Are we doing this tomorrow?” He asked.

“Not in the evening, I have plans, but I want you to work on what we did today. I want you to hit the speed bags every day, focus on your observational skills, and even if it’s just walk in a room, take a mental snapshot then recite it all to yourself with your eyes closed before you check to see what you missed, I want you to make a note of what you missed and why you might have missed it. Do it at home, do it at school, do it on the subway. Add people to that list of mental snapshots. What are they wearing, what jewelry did you see, what defining characteristics or tattoos did they have that were visible? Do they move with a limp? Are their shoulders stiff?”

His eyes widened as she listed them off. “That’s—that’s a lot.”

“Without looking, what color are my toenails?”

“Um…”

“C’mon kid, Red’s not had shoes on this whole time,” Mr. Stark added before the suit landed and began playing the Jeopardy theme song.

Really.

Not helpful.

Peter frowned. Her toes had been red, but was that because she’d been sitting on them or… “I don’t think you have any polish on them.”

“Are you sure?” Natasha challenged.

He spread his hands and gave her an exasperated look. “Eighty percent. Unless they are some pale neutral shade, you don’t have any polish on.”

She glanced at the suit of armor and there was a sudden round of ding! Ding! Ding! Then applause and Peter glanced down to her bare toes.

“No polish. And while you guessed, you were still relying on what you thought you saw—and that’s something.”

Man. Who knew guessing toe nail color would be more stressful than a pop quiz in AP Lit? “So more practice, and then you’ll call me for my next session?”

“Or surprise you—since you have to come here to do some of it.”

He groaned. “Which means I’ll never know when you show up until you show up…”

“I guess that means you need to pay attention and keep looking over your shoulder.” Her smile was worth it.

“I can do that.” He headed for his backpack, and tried not to stare at the report.

“Peter?”

“Yeah?” He spun to look at her as he walked backward.

“You can have your suit back—”

He gaped.

“—provided—”

Some part of his brain stopped listening as he ran over to hug her. He whirled her around. He was getting his suit back! No more grounding!

“—you follow some rules.” She finished on a huff of laughter.

“I will! I will! I promise.” He set her down and then raised his hands. “Really, I will.”

“I see how it is, I’m the bad cop cause I took it away and she’s the good cop because she gave it back.”

“No offense, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, turning to face the suit. “She’s a way better bad cop than you are.” Then he winced, and look at Natasha. “I mean that respectfully.”

“Hmm…” But she just shook her head and smiled. “Go get cleaned up.”

“I will—wait—what are the rules?”

“Home by midnight, you stick to the street crimes, and you keep your head on a swivel. Don’t engage with heavily armed groups. Call for help if you need it.”

How did that help? “But—some of that is below your pay grade,” he said with a frown.  

“But you’re not below our paygrade,” she told him. “And I’m going to come out and join you a few times for your patrol…probably not tonight, but maybe tomorrow. You also _have_ to _vary_ your routes.”

He winced. She’d delivered that lesson rather painfully.

“I will, I promise.”

“Karen is also going to keep track and send me updates,” she told him and he could live with that.

“I can do that too, I used to call Happy with reports, and Mr. Stark. I can do that for you…and I can write them up…you know if you don’t think that’s lame.”

“I don’t think it’s lame, in fact, I’d rather when you write it up you also list what went right, what went wrong, and how could you do it better.”

“I will. You have my word.” He was getting his suit back. “Okay, I’ll be right up to the lab, okay Mr. Stark?”

“I’ll be here, kid.”

Peter almost swooped her up for another hug, then thought better of it. Maybe she wasn’t a hugger. Not everyone was. Mr. Stark wasn’t. He snatched his backpack and jogged to the locker room, behind him he heard Mr. Stark say, “You’re going soft, Red.”

“Bite me,” was Natasha’s only response and he grinned.

He was getting his suit back.


	32. Boyfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets surprised for her third date

**Chapter Thirty-Two**

**Boyfriend**

**Natasha**

 

 

Morning found her waking alone—again. It was early enough the sun was a question mark of a thin red line on the horizon set against the cloud cover. Sliding out of bed, she fixed the covers before dragging on sweatpants over her panties, and then a hoodie over her tank top and jammed her feet into sneakers. There was a note in front of the coffee maker—again, and this repeat at least made her smile.

 

_Angel,_

_Went running. Dragged Buck with me. After coffee, go to your floor for your first surprise of today. Looking forward to tonight._

_Steve_

First surprise? Touching the chain beneath the hoodie as if to make sure it was still there, she grinned, then flicked the coffee maker on. She couldn’t say she was overly fond of waking up alone each day, but she didn’t hate having the coffee ready to go or the notes. Taking this one back into the bedroom, she slipped it in the drawer with the rest.

She took a minute to brush her teeth, and run a comb through her hair before dragging it all up into a messy ponytail. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, so she filled her thermos with coffee, snagged a mug, and headed up to the roof. It was quiet, and she’d half-expected Clint to already be there, but maybe she was earlier than he this morning.

Settling onto a chair, she faced the east, and ignored the chill in the breeze. She cradled a mug of coffee and focused on hoping the sun managed to shed the bumpy gray sky to pierce the clouds.

When she’d gotten back to their floor after training with Peter, she’d needed a shower and she’d avoided any signs of limping out of the gym or the elevator. It had taken a lot to get the kid to actually fight back, and he’d gotten her a couple of times but it had been well worth it. Control was great, but until he could tell her _how_ he was doing it, then his control was all instinct and if shattered, could be impossible to repeat.

Conversation between Steve and James had broken off at her appearance, and she tried hard not to be suspicious of it. They were entitled to their privacy, she reminded herself over and over. It wasn’t good for any of them if she wanted to bug the floor or ask Friday to let her listen in on the off chance something was wrong. The need to know had been ingrained in her blood, as it went hand in hand with mission success and survival.

Neither Steve nor James was a mission.

Not. A. Mission.

Not. Marks.

Steve had grabbed his keys and headed out to get dinner for them, leaving her with a kiss as she headed for the shower. James followed her into the shower, and his intense, focused, and very pleasurable assault on her senses had left her shaking. When he’d clung to her, she’d hugged him tightly but he never said a word about what, if anything, was wrong.

Not after the shower when they got dressed, not over food with Steve, not when she’d curled up between them to watch a movie, and not when they’d gone to bed. Everything _seemed_ normal, but it was on the surface. Like the placid glassy top belied the dark threat of churning waters beneath.

 _And I have to stop._ She blew out a breath and stared at the sun, pushing a lot of encouragement into the growing red band. It needed to push past the dark clouds. Just because James was quiet didn’t mean something was wrong. There could be a hundred different reasons for it—they’d just had their first mission alone without Steve—except they’d run ops in Europe so that didn’t quite fit. He was still putting his memories back together—not that he’d mentioned new ones, but she didn’t share every little detail worked loose in her mind.

She’d never brought up the fact she’d met Tony’s father or Peggy Carter in the 50s. It didn’t quite feel real, and yet—she’d verified that they had been in Helsinki then. So it was possible. No, James had a right to sort his memories out the best way it worked for him.

He was still healing though, and while he slept the least out of the three of them, he never seemed fatigued—except yesterday there had been shadows around his eyes. Shadows that hadn’t quite eased even after making her come three times in the shower or pounding himself so deep, he might as well have been a part of her skin.

Maybe she was just making too much of it. Steve didn’t seem—especially worried. But Steve also couldn’t hide the concern in his eyes, but that could be for just about…

Stop.

She gave herself a mental shake. They weren’t a mission and they weren’t marks. If something was wrong, they would tell her. If she wanted to know so badly, she should just ask them.

_And if they lie to me?_

Unwilling to pursue that thought to its inevitable conclusion, she shoved it away. The breeze stung at her cheeks, but the hot coffee warmed her. The elevator ding signaled Clint’s arrival, and she glanced over her shoulder at her best friend as he wheeled out.

“You’re in my spot,” he said by way of greeting. “So you better have brought coffee.”

“Didn’t you make some before you came up?” She challenged, but held up her thermos anyway.

With a laugh, he rolled forward and patted the thermos of his own. “I did, but your coffee always tastes better.”

She snorted. They both knew that wasn’t true, still she poured coffee into his mug and they saluted each other then looked out toward the sun’s valiant attempt to make an appearance.

Clint gave her the space of five minutes before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, but didn’t wait for him to call her on it. “Nothing specific anyway—Tony and I compared notes on the research into that substance and we still don’t know enough to do anything about it. Worked with Peter—finally got him to hit me, that was something.” She would not mention Steve or James, that wasn’t a nothing but it also wasn’t something concrete. “Read Lila’s letter.” The last, however, made her sigh.

“That bad, huh?” Clint eyed her over a sip of coffee.

“No…she just doesn’t understand why I can’t come see her or why some people are saying that I’m bad. She still refuses to believe it and she laid out a plan for me to visit right down to how I could arrive in the middle of a new moon night so it would help cover my arrival—I could stay in the storm cellar, it’s apparently very nice, and she would come camp out with me so we could tell stories. It’ll be warm and dry, and if we used the power, no one could see. Also—it’s insulated cause Daddy put soundproofing in for some reason, she wasn’t sure why.”

“You know…that’s actually not a bad plan.” He pursed his lips.

“She’s very clever.”

“Too clever.” But he tangled his fingers with hers and gave them a squeeze. “Nat, if you want to see them, we can figure out a way…”

“No, it’s too dangerous Clint. If anyone suspected…”

“No one knows they are there.” It was a sweet, if idealistic argument and he knew better. When she stared at him he sighed. “Yes, and no one knows they are there because we don’t take foolish chances. Fine—then we slip them to the Tower on their next visit.”

“Clint…”

“Hush.” He scowled at her. “You’re hurting. She’s hurting. I know Cooper would love to see you, he’s all stoic about it, but he worries and Laura isn’t stoic, and she definitely wants to see you.”

“At least Nate doesn’t really know me enough to miss me.”

“That’s why I still have a chance to be his favorite,” Clint retorted, but gave her hand another squeeze. “We’ve handled impossible situations before, Nat. We can do this.”

Well, she wasn’t getting her hopes up. One of them needed to keep their feet on the ground. “How was PT?”

“It was fine. Miserable as hell, but I went a whole twenty feet farther, so woo hoo. Your boyfriend dragged me off to the shooting range after—that was fun.”

James hadn’t mentioned that. “So who won?”

With a flinty eyed look, Clint flipped her off. “I’d claim I was down an arm but that argument wouldn’t fly.”

She threw her head back and laughed.

“That’s it—you just keep giggling. We’ll see how well that number of his lasts when my shoulder PT is done.”

“How close was it?”

“Eh—not too bad. He had cleaner groupings. But my shoulder is a little shaky. Another couple of weeks and it might be a fair fight.” Not that he seemed to be complaining. If anything there was a spark in his eyes.

“So in a couple of weeks, I’ll meet you on the range,” she told him. “Don’t want you to have any excuses when I kick your ass.”

He snorted, but the crinkles around the corners of his eyes deepened. “He also mentioned you have a date with Steve tonight.”

“Yes,” she said without apology, and sipped her coffee.

“Uh huh,” Clint eyed her. “So you really are dating both of them…”

“Well, I’m dating Steve because…well he wanted to date and it turns out dating is a lot of fun.” She could admit that to Clint. “I don’t think James and I are dating by the strict definition of the word, but we are enjoying being together and I like having him back in my life.”

“Thank you, Miss Literal. You’re in a relationship with both of them is what I meant and you damn well knew it.”

Yes—yes she did, but… not buts. She met his gaze, and said, “Yes.”

After studying her for a long moment, he asked quietly, “This is what you want?”

“They are.” So far, she’d really only admitted that to the two of them, but this was Clint and she could tell him. He knew her, had known her, and believed in her even when she didn’t. “I…I’m happy. I’m—dating Steve. I’ve never done that. It’s…fun and it’s different. He’s really thoughtful, and funny—we laugh, a lot.”

“And Barnes?”

“It’s intense, but familiar and….I’m attached, Clint. So damn deep. James—the pieces I remember, the way I felt and the trust, it’s right there. It’s so easy to just lean into it.” And when had it ever been easy? “I want to lean into it, and him.”

The cold had made her face a little numb and she was grateful for that. She refilled her mug with hot coffee and his when he held it out. The heat penetrated the chill of her fingers, and chased away the little catch in her throat when she took a sip.

“Okay,” Clint said quietly, and she relaxed. He’d told her before she had to choose, and she’d tried not to think about his opinion on all of this. It was unconventional, but then again—what the hell about her had ever followed any conventions?

“So—tell me about the dates.”

“No,” she murmured over the coffee, staring at the faintly growing ribbon of light. It wasn’t quite shoving the clouds away, but it was there.

“No?”

“No,” she told him, then smiled. “Those are ours…and I like having them just be ours.”

He chuckled, and shook his head. “All right…so where is he taking you tonight?”

“I have no idea,” and what was more, she didn’t care. Steve was taking her, and she looked forward to getting there.

At Clint’s silence, she stole a look at him and found him eyeing her speculatively.

“What?”

“You really are happy, Tasha.”

The corner of her mouth quirked. She was in hiding, a fugitive, pursuing some mad science experiment that could turn people into zombie like forms or blow them up or both from a corporation with shady military ties who’d dug it up from the ocean, all the while training a teenage vigilante and backing up a team of heroes over half of which didn’t know she was even there while still tackling a few sideline jobs to pay the bills… “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I am.”

 

An hour later, Nat headed to her floor for her “surprise” while Clint went to PT. He hadn’t asked her anymore questions about Steve and James, but she hadn’t missed the assessment in his eyes. While he didn’t seem “worried,” she couldn’t miss the suggestions of concern. Then again, they’d known each other long enough that he trusted her judgment.

Or at least she hoped he did, because she had been honest when she admitted to being happy even if saying it out loud seemed like a damn dare to the universe to spit in her eye. The doors opened to her floor, and the lights were at fifty percent, creating a sort of hazy golden effect between the wooden floors and soft cream walls accented by gray carpeting. A note on the wall opposite the elevator said, _Living room first._

Smiling she plucked the sticky note off the wall and headed toward her sitting room. There was a single rose in a vase on the table and another note. Setting her thermos and mug down, she opened the note.

 

 _So, you might call me a sap, but I’ve been researching dates. The Internet is full of different ideas about what makes a good date. Too many people seem to focus on how much they can spend or not spend, the financial part of it all. That wasn’t what I was looking for. Dating you is a new and fantastic experience I am savoring, but I’m not sure I’ve been showing you just how important it is to me. How important_ you _are to me. Forgive me, Angel if I make you cry._

_Hit play._

_Steve_

Setting the note down, she picked up the remote and hit play. Steve’s face filled the screen and she grinned.

 

“Hello, my name is Steve Rogers. A lot of people know me as Captain America, they’ve written about me in the history books, and they’ve put me on display in museums. They tell—part of my story.” The camera panned out and he was in her dance studio. She half twisted on the sofa to the closed door of it, then back to the screen. “They embellish a lot of the tales—make them myths, because myths give people hope and I suppose that’s okay. But when you’re a myth, people forget that you’re also a man. That you’re flawed, you have weaknesses, wants, desires, and even needs that may not line up with the image they’ve constructed of you. People describe me as perfect…but I’m far from it. Still, I’m not here to talk about me today—I’m here to talk about my hero. The woman who inspires me. The woman who should have her own exhibit where people could learn the true story of Natalia Alianova Romanova.”

Nat blinked slowly.

Her face filled the screen, it was her in a civilian clothes—the haircut said 2012, maybe…when she met Steve, again.

“Born in 1930, Natalia Romanova grew up in a secret Soviet program which taught her she was a thing, and not a person. This program, considered cruel and inhuman by any standard, honed her physical and mental prowess to peak form. For decades, she served her country at great cost to herself until finally seizing her own freedom in 1984. There, our heroine’s story took a troubled turn…but despite several lifetimes spent under the cruel thumb of oppression, Natalia Alianova Romanova still possessed the heart and soul to reinvent herself over and over until she met Agent Clint Barton…”

The images of her on the screen changed to Clint and it was a video. “Not really sure why you want to know this—but sure, Nat’s one of a kind. She’s the last person to claim anything for herself, and the first one into the fight. If she’s at your back, you know you’re going home. Because she won’t let anything else happen. She never gave up on me, and I’ll never give up on her.”

Then the image changed to footage of she and Clint fighting in New York.

“During the Battle of New York, the now Agent Romanoff, was right there in the thick of things. She helped bring together a group of heroes and then acted as boots on the ground—” The image changed to her leaping off Cap’s shield, it was a blurry bit of footage but there it was. “And in the sky. What most people forget in the aftermath—it was Agent Romanoff who closed the portal. It was Agent Romanoff, who every bit as much as Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America who saved the day, but Agent Romanoff doesn’t take credit or accolades—she just does her job and then slips away.”

Tony appeared on the screen, sitting in his lab and he was staring just past the camera with a half-smirk. “When she sees this and spanks you, make sure you film that for me.” Then he focused on camera. “I met Red in 2010, it was—not a banner year for me. I was dying and she was working undercover to spy on me. I can’t say it was the most auspicious start, but…despite the fact I was an ass, and I’m still an ass at times, she helped save my life, and she saved Rhodey’s. Without her—things with Vanko might have ended very differently. She didn’t stick around after to take any credit, she doesn’t ever seem to expect it. Not even when she bails us out of aliens, or robots, or from nazi power mongers who try to shoot us in the head. You keep saving our lives, Red, even when we’re too stubborn to listen.”

For the first time in her life, her face was hotter than hell. And she had to wipe away some moisture from her eyes.

The image shifted to Thor and she blinked. It had to be old news footage—it was—oh they were near the shawarma place, and she could just see herself in the background slipping away. “It was a fine battle,” Thor was saying. “But I was not the one to close the portal, that was the fair and fine Lady Widow, if not for her we might still be waging war in the skies…your Earth is protected by many mighty defenders and I am proud to be one of them.”

She smothered a laugh, the fair and fine Lady Widow.

The image shifted to Bruce, and she sucked in a breath. “Natasha’s—complicated. I like to think we’re friends, but…sometimes I don’t know if I’m the kind of friend she needs. But I do know that as much as I resented her appearing in India—I’m grateful that she brought me here.” He hesitated and looked somewhere beyond the camera. “Why are we doing this Tony…? Yeah, but we don’t know when her birthday is…”

Nat shook her head as Bruce fiddled with his glasses and looked at the camera again—this had to be old footage.

“Thanks Natasha, I don’t think I’ve ever said it before—thank you for making me step up. You said you would persuade me, and you did. Being a part of the solution—is more important than I realized.”

The image changed again and this time it was Peter sitting there.

“Okay—is this thing on? Yeah okay—so I’m here in Germany—check it out?” In the background she could see herself, and Tony…it was the moment they were confronting Cap. “I’m with the Avengers—how cool is that?”

Then the image shifted. “I feel like an idiot for recording that, but in my defense…I was really new at pretty much everything and it was freaking Iron Man and Black Widow and stuff—well and Captain America but you know we weren’t on the same side then, but it’s better now.” Peter fidgeted, his cheeks staining pink, and then said. “Natasha Romanoff is teaching me. The last thing I expected but…she’s cool, and terrifying, and awesome. Even if she startles the crap out of me…I like learning from her.” Then he leaned forward. “She’s probably a little cooler than Mr. Stark…” Then he grinned and the image shifted to photos of her scattered around—news images, her appearance at Capital Hill, Geneva, and more.

James appeared on the screen, and he shook his head, before focusing on it. “Natalia is everything. She reminded me of what it is to be human, and she was the best thing about the darkest part of my life, and remains the best thing now. She saved my life, and she keeps saving it—every single day.”

The image this time was the three of them during their tickle fight in the gym, and she laughed, and finally Steve appeared.

“These are the kind of stories that should be told about you, but they are too personal and too private for a museum. But they should never be personal and private from you. I told you once—that even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. That was true. But even when I had nothing, not even Bucky—I had you. You were my guidepost for the twenty-first century, my teacher, my friend—my partner. You saved my life every day, you kicked me in the ass to live…and even when I made bad choices, you didn’t abandon me. I made the mistake once of waiting too long, and I told you I wasn’t going to do that anymore…and I’m not. You’re my everything, Nat. You’re my Angel.”

He cleared his throat, and she had a hand pressed to her mouth to try and hold back the emotion clawing up inside of her.

“If you’re still speaking to me after this, and I very much hope you are—follow the notes—and I’ll see you at three.” Then he hesitated before adding, “And this video is locked to your voice print, so you don’t have to worry about anyone peeking.”

She laughed.

The video ended with a little note on the screen.

_Your studio is next, Angel._

_Steve_

Leaving the coffee mug and thermos on the table, she slid off her sneakers before padding in her socked feet over to the dance studio. The note on the door was another sticky note and it said.

_Video first. Then close your eyes, open the door, walk forward ten steps, and stop. Then ask Friday to start._

_Trust me, Angel._

Was he trying to kill her? Folding the note, she slid it into the pocket of her hoodie, then closed her eyes before opening the door. Trusting Steve, she entered, and closed the door behind her before walking forward ten steps.

“Friday? Can you start, please?”

“It would be my pleasure Ms. Romanoff.” She opened her eyes as a single spotlight broke the darkness and Elvis Costello began to sing and she laughed. Okay, yes, Steve was a sap, but it was a beautiful song and there on the mirror was a sketch of her, it wasn’t one of the ones she’d already seen. In this one, she had long straight hair, and a hand up close to her face. Her expression was all thoughtful and business like. Probably a briefing. Then the spotlight moved to the next one. It was just her eyes, and there was a hint of dirt on her cheeks, but her eyes were open—naked and vulnerable and it made her catch her breath. Sam's place, after Lehigh, after finding out about Hydra and surviving the missile strike.

One by one the light shifted as it took her on a path around the studio. Sketches of her laughing, working, smiling, and even frowning. At SHIELD, in Steve’s old apartment, on his floor here, at the chalet in Switzerland—even one that looked like Venice. There was one of her asleep, curled onto her side, it was almost as vulnerable seeming as the one with her eyes so raw. Every single image evoked an emotion or a memory. It was like he’d drawn—their time together. The last three though gave her pause.

In the first, she was standing there wearing a troubled expression and she knew it exactly. It was the moment when she’d said “You’re not going to stop,” and he’d told her he couldn’t. Then she’d been almost resigned as she made her choice to stop T’Challa. It was when she’d let he and James go.

The next image was her in the apartment in Vienna, she was fierce in it, and remote but there was something about the eyes—they were watchful and disapproving.

The very last—the very last was her lying against the pillows her face turned toward him with a hint of a smirk on her lips and she was naked though he’d only shaded in a hint of her breasts. That had to be the one he’d drawn the night she _posed_ for him.

Then the lights came up fully and Steve’s voice said, “You told me once you spilled all your covers out there and you had to go find another one. But what I hadn’t understood then was how many pieces of yourself you’d surrendered, how much of you that you pour into every identity. It’s important to me that you know I see you, Angel. I see Natalia Alianova Romanova. I see Natasha Romanoff. I see my teammate, my friend, and my partner. I see you.”

She turned in a slow circuit and blew out a breath. The music had long since stopped. He did see her. Maybe too damn much.

“Ms. Romanoff,” Friday said gently. “Food has been delivered for you, and Captain Rogers asked that you eat before you enjoy a long hot bath, and relax before he picks you up later. He insisted today is about pampering you—and no one is going to bother you unless there is an emergency.”

He appeared to have thought of everything.

 

Four hours later, after soaking for an hour in a hot, fragrant bath then taking her time to do her hair and having breakfast—her favorite pastry sandwiches that he’d apparently gone out to find again—more coffee and a nap on her sofa while watching a movie, she counted down the hours until he picked her up. The last note said to not open it before two-thirty, which was thirty minutes before he picked her up.

It was weird not seeing either of them after they got back from their run, but it was—also kind of nice. She enjoyed being around them, but she needed her solitude too. Steve seemed to have seen that and there was a quiver of trepidation at being so clearly transparent after guarding those secrets for so long. His seeing her so clearly made her vulnerable, he could use what he knew…

She stopped and sat up. Steve was not going to use it against her. Had he disappointed her in Germany and Siberia? Yes. But that was then and he hadn’t turned on her, nor fought her—even when she’d triggered, he’d not fought her.

She could _trust_ him.

She _did_ trust him

When her mind wanted to wind itself up, she gave in and did a little work. There was finally messages from both the art thieves and the curator. They were ready to negotiate. She sent notes to both instructing them she would arrive in Toronto within seventy-two hours, and she required a viewing of the art before any final settlement could be reached.

The museum and its board may be willing to pay the ransom, but she wasn’t going to pay it without making sure the art was actually genuine. Then she considered looking into more on Roxxon, but it was getting close to when she could open the last note.

With five minutes left to go, she gave into curiosity and opened it early.

 

_Angel,_

_Looking forward to tonight. Wear your tact suit, and a jacket. You’re going as you—and I’m going as me. Happy Halloween._

_Steve_

Halloween?

Nat pivoted and looked toward her bedroom, her gear was once again stored in her closet. Halloween—and she was going out as herself. It was both—titillating and dangerously stupid.

_You’re going as you, and I’m going as me._

Captain America and the Black Widow were going on a date—on Halloween. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. It was—perfectly insane, and adorable. Dressing up as the Avengers was really popular on Halloween, they’d all noticed it. In fact, she’d mocked it especially the sluttier female version of the Iron Man and Captain America costumes. But the skin tight pleather on the women had looked dramatically uncomfortable compared to her suit.

And the red wigs.

Red wigs everywhere.

“Bozhe moi,” she murmured aloud. He really had thought of everything.

Blowing out a breath, she went to gear up. There was something comforting about slipping into the tact suit and checking her pouches. Even if it was only a date, she wanted everything charged, and loaded. The guns were probably not going to fly—if a cop stopped them then it would lead to too many questions. Still, she could fit her knives in where they went. Her Widow’s Bites settled familiarly on her wrists and her outfit hid her bracelet and the dog tags securely, but she knew they were there.

She’d left her hair curly, and she added only the lightest of cosmetics—just enough of the magnetic base to subtly alter facial recognition. The woman staring back at her from the mirror was her—and yet, she looked different to her own eye but she couldn’t quite put her finger on the why.

Tilting her head, she gave herself a critical once over. On the upside, the tact suit was comfortable and secure. The armored lining in the suit would protect against possible attacks if they were noticed…

Fuck.

If they were noticed…

Maybe going out was not a good idea. Steve didn’t need that level of grief. It would be bad enough if she had to slip the net and lie low to keep the heat from tracking back here. If they saw Steve with her that could get him into trouble with the committee. They’d just gotten him back to work…

A chime dinged overhead pulling her out of the vicious loop of logic battle. “Yes, Friday?”

“Captain Rogers is on his way down in the elevator, he wanted me to check to see if you were ready.”

Well, yes, but maybe they could revisit his plan. He’d already given her an amazing day. Did they really need to go out?

She was still arguing with herself when she walked out to meet the elevator and the doors opened to reveal Steve in his full—old school uniform—mask and all, with the shield on his back, and she burst out laughing. He looked ridiculously good and silly all at once. No one should look that great in that outfit, and yet he owned it.

His grin answered hers. “Hey…still speaking to me?”

“Well,” she said slowly as he stepped out and made a play of thinking about it. “I don’t know…being told how wonderful I am and then given a full gallery of exquisite art based on me as well as a day of relaxing pampering with my favorite foods is a little bit to swallow, you know. I might want to recommend you to medical.”

The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Is that so?”

“You do realize…assassin, right?”

“Hmm-hmm.”

“You’re a show boy.”

“A show boy?” He sputtered.

“Well, it would be rude to call you a show girl.” She was a master of expression, and she couldn’t quite keep from smiling. “Besides…you have a show boy’s ass, and you’re definitely wearing the suit to show it off.”

This time he threw his head back and laughed. “So does that mean you have an assassin’s ass?”

Really, he wanted to give her that opening? “I don’t know,” she turned, and popped one hip out with a hand on it to give him a good look, before glancing over her shoulder. “You tell me.”

“That ass,” he drawled out the word slowly as he took a couple of steps forward before continuing “is a work of art.” There was something about hearing Steve curse even with something as simple as the word ass that warmed her. Even with the mask and the uniform, he was Steve. He would always be Steve.

“Huh,” she said playfully, pivoting to face him. “I’m surprised my ass wasn’t on the wall then.”

“Just because I didn’t hang it up there, doesn’t mean I haven’t drawn it.” Then he winked. “But that’s art for me to admire.”

She shook her head. “Now you’re being a sap.”

“Only now? Whew.” He made a show of wiping his forehead. “Had me worried there.”

As much fun as it was, she sobered… “Are you sure you want to go out like this…I mean…”

“Yes, I’m sure.” He closed the distance, and when he slipped his arms around her, she wrapped hers around his neck. His shield was right there for her to brush her fingers against, and he really was kitted up like they were going on a mission just like her. “I want to be seen with you—and I’m proud to be seen with you. More—there are a lot of yous out there tonight, and I’m the only one with the real Natasha Romanoff.”

“And I get the real Steve Rogers.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re crazy,” she told him seriously, but he wasn’t going to back off on this. He’d made up his mind and it was written all over his face.

“For you? Yes I am,” he agreed, then his expression gentled. “Come out with me, Natasha. Let me show you my New York, let me take you to Brooklyn…I want to show you the waterfront, the neighborhood where I grew up, and the pieces of it that are still there. I want to spend the night out with you, and it’s Halloween…we can play like the kids we haven’t gotten to be in a long, long time.”

Or ever, but he didn’t say that.

Leaning her head back, she caught her lower lip in her teeth and then repeated. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes” he breathed, then dipped his head and kissed her, soft, slow, and sweet. He didn’t deepen it, just held her there, suspended on the edge of too much emotion before releasing her mouth to whisper, “It’s going to be fun.”

Then he backed off a step, before sliding a comm out of his pocket and tucking it into her ear, then drawing out a single black mask, it would fit over her eyes, and the little strap would be hidden by her hair.

“Kinky,” she murmured, and he reddened but his smile didn’t fade. When he pulled out his phone, she laughed, and leaned back against him her back to his chest as he angled the camera and she helped him set up the selfie—and then they took it, both of them grinning at the camera.

“Perfect,” he said. “Ready?”

“No,” she admitted, because the knot in her gut wasn’t easing. She didn’t want to cost him anything. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Six minutes later, they slipped out of the garage and then circled the tower. The cloudy skies were still present but so far no rain. It was just going to be a gloomy afternoon before it gave way to night. There was a huge crowd of people out in front of the Tower, including kids and they were all in costume. There had to be a dozen Black Widows alone, and they were protesting her fugitive status. Steve whistled and gave a thumbs up to the Caps who were out there and they saluted him back. There were various Iron Mans, a couple of Thors—and even a Loki, which was sobering.

They posed for a couple of pictures with his phone to play off the cover, and it was—surreal. Laughing they headed down the block to where he’d parked his bike, apparently in preparation for just this moment.

When she slid on behind him, and settled her arms around his waist, she said, “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

He pressed a hand over hers on his abdomen and said, “Thank you, Angel.”

Then they were off, and it was—exhilarating to race through the streets on the back of his bike even doing just the speed limit as _her_. She wasn’t in a photo static veil, she wasn’t wearing a cover, she was just Natasha, because she was the Black Widow, and he was just Steve.

He took them across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan and it was a gorgeous view even with the lead gray skies. He parked on the far side, and then they walked along the Brooklyn Waterfront, and the park. He was right—they weren’t the only people in costumes. There were dozens of kids racing around, and more than a few little Spider-Mans which made her laugh amidst the witches, vampires, and ghouls. There were rock stars, and actors, and even a few mutant turtles and more.

There were places where he’d fished off piers when he was younger. Then he pointed out the Navy Yard where James had gotten jobs when it was still just a port. He bought them each a slice of hot pizza and they ate them carefully while watching a group of teenagers play out a light saber battle—which entertained the hell out of her. They hadn’t gotten around to watching the new movie yet, but the Kylo Ren and the Reys and the storm troopers were definitely noticeable.

“They do a fair down here,” Steve pointed out the vendors who were setting up. “It’s a great place for little kids to trick or treat, and for the teens to hang out. There will be a DJ here in a little while and…” He slowed off when a little girl ran up to them and stared with wide eyes. She couldn’t have been more than five.

“Wengers!”

“I’m sorry,” a harried woman said as she caught up with her. “She thinks you’re the real thing.”

“It’s fine,” Steve told her with an easy smile, but the little girl couldn’t take her eyes off them, so Natasha pressed a finger to her lips and said, “Shh, we’re undercover.”

Wide eyes widened bigger and she nodded frantically, then looked from side to side. “I can keep secwets.”

“Okay,” Nat whispered, and then said, “Do you want to be a secret Avenger?”

With a snort of excitement she looked at her mother and said, “Pwease?”

The woman gave her an indulgent smile and threw Nat a grateful look, “Sure, but we don’t want to bother them too long.”

Handing off her slice to Steve, she dug into her pocket and pulled out a little pin. She used to use it as a tracker, but it had the little A on it for the Avengers and she’d grabbed a few from a street vendor one day and tinkered with it. She liked making things that hid in plain sight, palming the pin she knelt down on the little girl’s level and said, “When you wear this, you’re a secret Avenger and that means you have to be truthful, and brave, and stand up to bullies. Can you do that?”

“I pwomise.” The little girl raised her hand like she was giving an oath, and Nat affixed the pin to her collar. Then smiled at her.

“Welcome to the Secret Avengers.”

The little girl gave a little squeal and clapped her hands, then grabbed her mom’s hand and waved at them as they walked away. Steve grinned as he handed her back the slice of pizza.

“So you just happen to have those in your belt, huh?”

She bumped his shoulder. “Hush. She was cute.”

“She wasn’t the only one.” But he took a bite of his pizza, still smiling.

After that, they made their way back to the bike, and he took her toward his old neighborhood. A lot of it had changed, been gentrified. But the buildings were still there. They ducked into a book shop run by a man who’d inherited from his father, and he’d grown up there. When Nat glanced at Steve, he mimed very short, then nodded to the guy. So he’d known him when he was little, and she hid another smile.

They spent about thirty minutes in the shop as old Reggie regaled them with tales of old Brooklyn. He was like an encyclopedia of knowledge about the history of the borough. Kids popped in and out, trick or treating, and by the time they left the shop the temperature had dropped. She was glad for both her suit and her jacket.

Steve slung an arm around her shoulders and walked her down the block toward an old theatre, stopping a few feet away to point up at the marquee. “This used to be called the Grand. It was built in 1902, it changed hands and became the Grand Dame in 1920, and then it was the Rio by the time of 1935. It’s the same building, the same foundation—and inside it’s the same paneling. They’ve refurbished it a few times since then, but we used to come here on Saturdays and get a double feature for nickel when we were kids. I used to come here to see the newsreels before the movies, to know what was happening with the war…” he pointed to the alley. “Got my ass kicked back there the last day before Bucky shipped out, he had to come and bail me out again. We headed out to Queens later to the Expo.”

“It’s still here,” she said.

“Yeah, and I always wanted to take my best girl out to a movie, so what do you say? They’re playing a French comedy tonight, it’s just here for the week, but…”

“We both speak the language?”

He grinned. “Care to see a movie with me?”

“Are we going to make out in the back row?”

“Maybe,” he added a sly grin. “I’ll definitely do the arm stretch and curl.”

That just made her laugh and she leaned on him, even as he slipped his arm around her waist. “You know…I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”

“Well,” he told her. “You do now.”

“I think I could get used to it,” she said with a grin and clasped his hand. “Shall we?”

Once inside, settled with popcorn and candy and his shield resting on the floor between their legs and securely tucked, he wrapped an arm around her without the fanfare of a stretch and then leaned over to whisper against her ear, “We’re not done after the movie, by the way…”

“There’s more?” She gaped at him for a moment. What else?

“Third date,” he told her, then gave her a very teasing kiss before feeding her a piece of popcorn. “Have to make it special.”

Leaning back, she studied him for a moment then stole another bite of popcorn as the theater went dark and the movie began to play. She didn’t know if she could handle anymore special than he’d already managed.

Even as the movie played, she kept glancing at him and catching him glancing at her, and then they’d both grin and go back to watching the movie.

Who knew third dates were so awesome?


	33. Girlfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Nat have a real talk, and he opens up about the one thing that frightens him

**Chapter Thirty-Three**

**Girlfriend**

**Steve**

For the first time, Steve was grateful for the mask. The French comedy was a tad more bawdy and raunchy than he expected with a couple of fairly graphic sex scenes—including one played more for comedy than sensuality. But Nat had a habit of stealing kisses from him during the more uncomfortable parts. Sinking into the softness of her mouth moving against his was more than enough to blot out the breathy moans on the screen, and when they pulled apart, he enjoyed the way the light of the movie danced over her features.

The day had gone better than he expected. It had taken him time to plot out exactly how he wanted the date to go. When he was younger, he’d had some very firm ideas of the proper order of dates. Nat had pretty much blown all of that out of the water, they were already close, they were already friends, they’d bonded over some pretty hellish events and they were practically living together.

Not that he would trade any of this, because he wouldn’t. He didn’t even mind the different stage she seemed to be at with Bucky. A part of him kept expecting jealousy, but it didn’t come. He couldn’t have been happier for them, they deserved every scrap of joy they could squeeze out of what had been left to them. Bucky remembering—it was a struggle for his best friend. He’d admitted that he wanted to be possessive and yet at the same time he couldn’t.

Steve understood that on a base level. So Tony might give him an odd look, and he hadn’t missed the questioning in Clint’s eyes, but Steve wasn’t discussing his relationship with Nat or Buck’s relationship with her with anyone that wasn’t Bucky or Nat. So, he’d adjusted his plans to match their situation. Their first date, the impromptu make out session on the roof had let them bridge some uncomfortable ground, and repair some damage inadvertently caused by bad reactions.

Their second date, the dancing date, had taken his breath away. He’d always loved the idea of dancing with his girl, of holding her, spinning her, and just enjoying being with her. When he’d told Peggy all those years ago the only reason he hadn’t was he’d been waiting for the right partner, he’d meant it. The affection and love he had for Peggy hadn’t diminished, but he wasn’t the guy anymore. A part of him knew that, he’d always mourn what could have been but Natasha was his present, she was—the partner he’d been waiting for, and more, the partner he wanted.

Tonight though, today and tonight had been about demonstrating how special she was. Natasha never took credit for what she did or put herself through. It never occurred to her to choose herself. Despite a history that would seem to encourage selfishness or even cold remoteness, she was the first one through the door toward danger and the last one out. Staying at the Tower, locked inside, was a choice she’d made for them—for he and for Bucky, and to some extent Tony and Clint. She could have vanished after taking down Ross, she could have gone anywhere in the world and retired.

But instead, she chose to fashion a cell—a very comfortable cell sure—but a cell nonetheless to work on building a relationship with he and Bucky. Maybe she wasn’t thinking of it that way, but Steve would never fail to notice the cost of her choices especially when they were gifts to him. The music rose to a crescendo on the screen, and abruptly he realized the couple were kissing in the rain and the camera panned out.

The movie was over.

As the credits rolled, she leaned over and nipped his ear. “You didn’t even watch the end.”

He winced, then chuckled. “Actually…I was captivated by a different story.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek.

“Do you think you can get away with everything just by flirting with me, Rogers?” she tsked at him but her smile grew.

“Not everything,” he said, then rose and offered her a hand before grasping his shield. He slid it into place on his back and they trailed out of the theater, depositing their drink containers and empty popcorn bag in the trash. Outside, the street was quiet as they walked to his bike. Settling against the seat, he tugged her closer and studied her. “Having fun?”

Her nose crinkled a little as she rested her hands against his chest. The armor meant he couldn’t quite feel more than just the lightest of pressure but he enjoyed the way she fit right there. “More than a little.”

“Good. You up for some more or you want to head back?”

“You said there was more.” While the mask hid her eyebrows, he had no doubt she’d raised them in a dare.

“There is, but I don’t want to wear you out.”

She snorted and he got a light punch for his trouble. Cupping her face, he dipped his head to nibble a kiss across her mouth, before dragging his teeth lightly across her lower lip. The low groan she released parted her mouth and he claimed a longer, heated kiss and savored the thrust of her tongue against his. Buttery popcorn and the hint of tart from the lemonade she’d had.

Resting against him, she leaned her weight into him as if trusting him to keep her on her feet and he had no problem balancing her. Finally, he lifted his head and sighed. Gliding his thumb over her lower lip, he caught his breath when she scraped her teeth against his skin. The fingerless gloves were a better idea than he’d imagined.

“It’s gotten chillier, you warm enough?”

“ _Ty sogrevayesh' moyu dushu_ ,” she whispered.

“I really need to learn Russian,” he teased her. “Translation please?”

Nat chuckled as he shifted onto the bike after setting his shield to the side, and she glided up behind him. Rising up, she nipped his ear and whispered, “ _Tu réchauffe mon âme_.” _You warm my soul._

His face heated at the words. “ _Ont-ils volé les étoiles du ciel à mettre dans vos yeux?_ ” It wasn’t quite the phrase he’d been taught but he wasn’t going to ask her if her father was a thief, rather he asked if they had stolen the stars from the sky to put in her eyes?

“Very smooth, _dorogoi_ ,” she smiled against his ear, then gave him another kiss just below it before settling against his back. With her arms firm around him, he started up the bike. He’d looked up that last word. Being called dearest just made him grin.

It wasn’t that late, but the dark clouds blotted out the moon and left them with only the streetlights for illumination. The ride from the theater to Prospect Park didn’t take long. The park hosted an annual fair during the afternoons, but during the evening the party was turned over to the adults.

Lights strung across the trees created golden grottos and fairy paths between Lookout Hill and Nethermead. Music filtered through the trees to where they’d set up a pavilion tent on the off chance rain tried to spoil the fun. Hand in hand, Steve led Nat through the trees away from the festivities and then he settled back against a tree and wrapped an arm around her. “So…”

“So?” She ran her hand along his forearm, head resting firmly against his shoulder. “What's on your mind?” Not even looking at him, and she seemed to know his mood had shifted even before he had. He'd brought her here for a reason, to give her another piece of his past and then maybe to dance, but his heart wasn't in the latter. Not at the moment.

“I love this place. When I was seventeen they opened the Prospect Park Zoo, and the playground areas. But even before then Bucky and I used to make our way over here during the summer to play in the lake or to just sit and read in the trees. Sometimes Buck would get involved in game of tag or they’d hit a ball around. I wasn’t good at the sports, but I didn’t mind hanging out or at least giving it a try and Bucky always included me. When we were older, we’d bring his sisters so they could play. But—right there,” he lifted his arm cradling her hand and pointed to the edge of Lookout Hill. “That’s where I drew my first landscape. I sat there all afternoon trying to get the trees right—got a sunburn for my trouble and couldn’t quite make the leaves the way I liked them…and it’s where I decided I was going to study art someday.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. He hadn’t told anyone this story, not even Buck.

“When you grow up not being able to breathe right, where you can’t physically do the things all the other kids do, and you can’t afford much—you look at your life and you wonder what am I good for?” It was a question he’d asked himself a lot. “My father died when I was a baby. Ma was pregnant with me and he was overseas fighting in France. He died, and she was alone to raise me. Single moms back then weren’t the thing, not like they are now. Mostly because work wasn’t so easy to get for women—we….” And yes, he would include himself in this. “We believed it was a man’s place to take care of his wife and his children, and if we couldn’t then her fathers or brothers—someone.”

He swallowed, and she interlaced her fingers with his. “But your mother didn’t have anyone else.”

“No,” he said slowly. “Just me. She was training to be a nurse when she met my dad, and she kept the training up. After I was born, she took every shift she could. That meant she worked in the places no one else wanted to work. I don’t know how old I was when I realized what a burden I had to have been. A sickly child when she worked in some of the worst wards, when she cared for the patients so ill they were dying by inches, and then she came home to a kid who was doing the same, only it was taking me a much longer time.”

“Steve…”

“It’s okay, Angel,” he whispered. “I need you to know this. I’ve done things and made choices that have affected you and this—this is why.” Maybe it wasn’t manly or seemly by most standards to admit what he was about to admit, but Nat had ripped open old wounds for him. He couldn’t do any less.

“Okay, but to be clear…your mother had to know what a wonderful, loyal guy you were and I don’t care if you were sick, you were probably the single most important thing in her life.” The absolute confidence in her voice wrapped around him like an embrace.

“That’s what you know?”

“Yes,” she said unflinchingly. “Because she never gave up on you.”

Heat stung his eyes and he blinked hard. No. His mother had never given up on him. Even when she was dying, she’d fought for him.

“Yeah,” he whispered softly. “The thing was…most kids had some kind of work by the time we were ten or eleven—little jobs, errands, carrying things, maybe even helping out in a factory. Something to earn a few cents to help out. I was never good at these things. I did errands at the local drugstore cause the chemist would give us a discount on my medicines…probably more than he should. But I couldn’t lift a lot, running wore me down or being in the factories and around the smoke would set off my asthma—I felt useless with jobs I could do few and far between.”

He blew out a breath.

“Pretty sure I frustrated Bucky more than anyone, cause he always wanted to split his money. He could do twice the work, he used to say, and split the difference. But I hated being charity…”

It infuriated Bucky, but like his mother, Buck never gave up on him.

“So there I am, sitting on that hill with some charcoal and sketch paper…it’d been a gift in payment for carrying groceries for Mrs. Mendolsohn down the street. Her husband had passed away and he used to be an artist—an illustrator of the paper. I think she wanted to give me all the stuff, but I wouldn’t take it—so she’d give me these easy jobs—go pick her up a couple of tomatoes. Well, as it turned out, she only needed one, so she’d give me one and then the paper, the pencils, and sometimes the ink.” He smiled.

His pride would never have let him take the items as a handout, but earning them even simply, let him enjoy them.

“When I sat there drawing all day, I realized that I didn’t need to be strong, or breathe well, or even fast to create something. Mr. Mendolsohn had been an illustrator for the paper, and it was honest work. Maybe I could do the same. Then I could contribute, I could take care of Ma…” It had been too little too late. It wouldn’t be another year before she took sick, and a few months after that she would pass away. After all her time in the TB ward, she’d caught it, too.

Pressing his cheek to her hair, he said, “I never thought I was enough. Not for Ma, for Buck—for anyone. When Ma died, it kind of confirmed it. Buck and I made do, when I wouldn’t move in with his family—he moved in with me. He covered most of the rent—used to lie to tell me it was less than it was so I wouldn’t feel bad about him paying so much.”

“But you knew.” It wasn’t a question.

“I always knew. But every time I brought it up, there’d be an argument; he wasn’t going to stop—then the war. And he got drafted. They weren’t going to take me, because I wasn’t healthy enough. Instead, Bucky was going over there and even when he never said anything about it, I knew he didn’t want to go.” Lifting his head, he watched the couples on the makeshift dance floor below switch from something slow and easy to something fast and bouncy. “But I kept trying, I had to follow. I had to be good enough to help him—because I wasn’t good enough or fast enough or strong enough to help Ma before she got sick.”

She squeezed his hand, and he was almost there. Just a few more words to tear it all out.

“So—when Erskine made me the offer, you know I took it. Then I wasn’t even good enough after that. They sent me off to raise war bonds, and they told me I was doing good things—but inside, I still a failure. Until I rescued Bucky, until I crossed behind enemy lines and got him and the rest of the 107th out. For the first time, I felt useful…I had a purpose. Then…I wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t stop.”

He licked his lips.

“Even after I woke up now, it was always in the back of my head. I had to prove my worth—to SHIELD, to the Avengers, to the world…and then there was a chance to save Bucky again.”

“And you couldn’t stop,” she said quietly, and turned. He had his back to a tree, but hers was to the rest of the park, and she didn’t hesitate. The fact she trusted him to watch her back wasn’t lost on him. “Steve, I know this. You—had to save him.”

“But Nat…that’s the thing, even after all of that—tearing the Avengers apart, hurting you, hurting Tony…I still think I’m not good enough and that I won’t ever be enough to fix it all. Like—I ended up trading your freedom for Buck’s. That’s what it feels like, I let you down.” He locked his gaze on hers. “You gave us back our lives, and we haven’t been able to do that for you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be enough to fix it for everyone…and I’m not sure how to not try and be that guy. And I worry that I’m going to keep failing you…”

He couldn’t do that. Not again.

He couldn’t face not being enough to save her, to keep her safe.

“Well—first thing—it’s not on you to save me.” She said it so easily, a gentle smile gracing her lips. “I’ve been saving myself for a long time. Where I am right now is where I chose to be. Whether it’s—because I let you and James go, or I took down Ross, or I chased those leads into Russia that nearly got us all killed.” She raised her brows. “My choices. It was my choice to take Clint’s offer. My choice to dump my aliases on the net. My choice to walk back into the Tower even though I knew I’d not be able to show my face in public. It’s important for you to be able to contribute and save the people you care about—it’s equally important for me to own my choices. I never had those before.”

He exhaled, and tightened his arms around her. “I know.”

“You do and you don’t. Just like I know how much you need to save the people around you—how you wanted to save Tony from grief, how you wanted to save James from Hydra, how you wanted to save Wanda from being held at the Compound, how you wanted to save us all from the Accords—Steve you define yourself in opposition to the things you believe will hurt those you care about, or even just will hurt innocents.” The frank amount of insight she had into him held his hostage. “You’ve been helpless. You’ve been at the mercy of the goodwill and choices of others. You’ve been the one who needed to be saved.”

He didn’t flinch away from the honesty.

“Did you think your need to do this had escaped me? Or would scare me off?”

“No,” he told her honestly. “But I don’t know that I’ll ever quit. I’m always going to be the guy who goes into the fight…and I don’t think Buck wants to be there anymore. And if you don’t…it’s okay.”

Her mouth twisted a fraction, and she leaned her head back watching him.

“It’s really okay. I want to make it okay for you.” If that meant letting her go, he could do that, too. But he didn’t want to and he would never want to—but she’d been through enough and if saving her meant letting her and Buck disappear, he could do that.

“ _Lyubimyy durak_ ,” she whispered, and he frowned. “Beloved fool,” she repeated and he stilled. “Steve—I am where I choose to be. Did you really spend this whole day telling me how special I am to you only to say you will let me go?”

“I—told you I’m a flawed man.”

She nodded slowly. “And?”

“You once asked me how I could be so perfect…”

“You once told me nothing I could say or do would ever drive you away.”

He’d said that to her on the quinjet when she’d worried about her past with Bucky, about what it could mean and what she could remember. “I meant it.”

“Then why should I mean any less. I know greedy and selfish, Steve. You’re not either of those things.”

“I could be—with you.”

“But you’re not.” She tilted her head back and looked up at the tree. “You’re steadfast, you’re kind…you sacrifice yourself, just like you’re trying to do right now, to help or save others. Because being that guy is important to you.”

“Nat…I’m not selfish with you where Bucky is concerned. I know you two are lovers again and I’m happy for you both. I mean it.” The weight of Bucky’s secret dragged on him, but he eased it aside for now, because there was another truth here. “I’m still happy for you. We said we could balance this and I think we’re doing a good job.”

“Better than me,” she admitted. “Sometimes I don’t think it’s real. That—I’ll wake up and it’ll be some dream they gave me to keep me compliant.”

Fuck. That admission scraped through him. “It’s not.” He pinched her. “We’re real.”

She laughed, but her expression even with the mask was deeply serious. “Then tell me the truth—do you want to let me go?”

“No,” he said, letting out a long, shaky breath. “I really don’t want to let you go.”

“Then…I accept you Steve Rogers, for who you are. The guy who always has to stand up to the bullies. The guy who is going to run into the fight. The guy who is going to fight for those who have no one to fight for them—even the guy who is sometimes too stubborn for his own good….but I’m also the woman who is not going to let you rush into that fight alone, who is going to have your back, and who is going to protect you from yourself and anyone else who tries to hurt you. You don’t want to trade lives…that means not trading _yours_ , Steve.”

“You said you’d die for me,” he exhaled the words, and fitted his hands to her hips to make sure she was right there and not moving away.

“Steve…”

“No, you said that—and those words…Nat…if the choice is ever between you and me…”

“You trust me to have your back, and I’ll trust you to have mine.” She said, pressing her fingers to his lips.

He’d lost his mom. He’d lost Bucky. He’d lost Peggy. He’d lost so much—he couldn’t lose her. “I trust you,” he said. “But I don’t want to lose you.” In pursuing her, he found he wanted her more with every passing day. He wanted the foundation they built their relationship to be as strong or stronger than anything else he’d ever shared. “That scares the hell out of me.”

She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere.” Now. She wasn’t going anywhere now, but…

“Nat…you let Ross torture you. You—you put yourself in the hands of Leonid and Alexei, knowing full well they were going to hurt you before you got the answers we needed…I hate seeing you go through that.” He swallowed, even now… “In New Orleans, you went into Roxxon…you risked yourself in there, with that bio organic material, you could have been…you could have been hurt in so many ways. I _hate_ when you’re in danger and I can’t stop it.”

“I’m not overly fond of you going into battle right now or on missions without me,” she told him. “But Steve…this is who we are. Is it enough to know I want to come back? That I’ll fight to be there?”

He wanted to say yes automatically. It was enough; it would always be enough. But he hesitated…hesitated and turned it over in his mind. Asking her to be anyone other than who she was—no, he couldn’t do that. Asking her to even put him first…it was selfish and…fuck that, he wanted to be selfish with her. “I don’t want you to die,” he admitted. “I don’t want to wake up one day and have you not be there. I want to be selfish, and keep you safe where no one will ever hurt you again…hell…if I could go back in time and tell my younger self about you in 1942 and 43—Bucky and I would go and get you and we’d never have let you go. I know you said you’d die for me, Nat, but I need you to live a lot more. I _need_ you to live, and to be as safe as you can. I won’t ask you to stay out of the fight, because that’s not you—and I don’t want to change you…”

Dammit, he was screwing this up. Dipping his head to rest his forehead to hers, he sighed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m ruining our evening.”

“No you’re not.” She raised her arms and hooked her hands together behind his neck, keeping her forehead to his. “You’re being honest with me…I didn’t realize how badly upset you’ve been—and I should have seen it.”

“You have no idea—I was so damn grateful you were at the Tower, but I’d already seen what Ross did to you in that video, and all I wanted was to beat his face in until there was nothing but pulp and bone dust. I hate how easily you discount your own safety.” Meeting her gaze, he said, “You told me they trained you to be a weapon. It’s how you’ve treated yourself. You’re the sword at our side, the dagger ready to thrust, and Clint was right—you’re the first one in the door without regard for what might happen to you on the other side—like you don’t matter. But you matter to me…you matter to all of us, but I need you to take better care of you.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, touching her tongue to her teeth before adding, “I’ll do everything I can to come back to you—if you do the same thing.”

He frowned, then released a little laugh. “I promise. I know it might be impossible for us…” Because that was their reality. When the city was rising in Sokovia, he hadn’t planned on leaving that rock with a single civilian on it and she’d said she hadn’t meant for them to leave—there were worst ways to go. The math—all the people up there versus all the people on Earth? It wasn’t even a question.

They’d both make that choice.

They both knew it.

“I need you, Angel,” he admitted. “I’m always going to need you.”

“And I’ll always try to be there…and I’m trusting you to be there for me.” If something happened to him, she’d have Bucky. That was something.

“Don’t do that…” She admonished him, and he sighed. How the hell did she read him so easily? “I’m not trading either one of you. You don’t have to either, deal?”

“Deal,” he conceded. He glanced past her to the dancing. “I brought you here to dance…but I’d rather just go be somewhere it’s the two of us…”

“Okay,” she told him. “I’m all yours. Lead the way.”

He chuckled, and blinked back the heavier emotion burning in his eyes. He hadn’t meant to unload all of that on her, but—it helped. It freed something he hadn’t even realized he’d been fisting so tightly.

“You feel better,” Natasha said knowingly and he nodded. “Please don’t be afraid to tell me when something is wrong.” She slipped a hand between them to loosen her top and tugged out the chain with his dog tags. “These…these tell me I matter to you. They remind me of you and how much I want to keep you safe. If I’m hurting you, I need to know.”

Stroking his thumb over the tags, then her fingers, he said, “Okay.”

She rose up on her toes and kissed him, gentle, and sweet. It was a promise. Taking his hands, she led him away from the trees and they walked through the park. It wasn’t directly back to his bike—instead they just walked and he pulled her closer, with an arm around her shoulders.

“So you were going to be an illustrator for the newspaper?” She asked.

“Yeah…figured Buck would get married and have kids, and I’d be the crazy uncle. If I lasted that long.” He winced internally. “I sound like a real winner, don’t I?”

“You sound like a fatalistic guy who wanted to be real with himself about his prospects—but when you believe something for so long, it’s hard to let that view of yourself go.” She canted her head to look at him.

“Because who you see yourself as—it’s always distorted by the past.”

She nodded slowly, the corner of her mouth kicking up. “You’re the kid in the alley, and I’ll always be the killer in the dance shoes. It’s hard to be someone else.”

“Nat…”

“No,” she said squeezing his hand. “This isn’t about comforting each other, it’s about being real. Steve—have you ever wondered why you were the poster boy for waiting too long?” She moved to turn sideways, once again walking with her back exposed and trusting him. It took him out at the knees that she was relaxing her guard for him, with him.

“I just—no one ever looked at me that way, Nat.” That was the truth.

“Wouldn’t have mattered if they did,” she told him. The breeze caught one of her curls and tumbled it across her eyes. “You never thought you had anything to offer. So if you waited—you wouldn’t disappoint them. You’d rather suffer than hurt someone else.”

That…felt scarily accurate.

“Not that I’m one to talk…not getting involved means I can cut ties and vanish when I need to. Not getting involved means no one can be used as leverage—” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “The mission always came first.”

He wanted to say not anymore.

Not for any of them.

They would sacrifice. They would fight. They would defend.

But the mission…the mission demanded too much from all of them.

“I’m not waiting anymore,” he promised.

“And I’m not avoiding being involved…” They were almost back to the bike, somehow having walked the long way around.

“We’re evolving,” he said with a grin.

“Or gambling…maybe a little bit of both.”

“It doesn’t feel like I’m gambling with you,” he told her as he slid onto the bike and dropped the shield into position.

“No?”

“No,” he turned his head to look back at her and she rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. “Feels like I won.”

Her smile warmed him all the way down. “Thank you for talking to me…for everything today. For the dancing, the dating, the food, the art, the video—the movie. For being honest with me about what’s scaring you. Just…you make me want to be better, but you also remind me that I am _more_.”

That revelation rocked him a little, because she was so much more than she ever seemed to realize. “Good. I’m going to keep telling you you’re everything until you believe it.”

She laughed as she nestled her chin next to his shoulder. “I have one question though…”

“Yeah?”

“How many dates until I get to rip your clothes off and play with you?”

Heat scalded along his cheeks and he barked out a laugh. “Okay…not what I was expecting.”

“You should, you’re driving me crazy.” The honest note in that made him grin wider than it should.

“Would you believe me if I said I don’t know—but I think we’ll both know when we’re ready?” He started the bike, and got them moving. The comms would let them talk, which was why he’d tucked it in her ear.

She was quiet for a while, before saying, “I want it to be special for you.”

“It will be…are you upset that I want to wait?”

“No,” she said, but she squeezed him tighter. “I’m not used to…”

“To someone courting you?” Which he knew, he knew there was no way she’d had this. Maybe that was why it was so damn important to him to give it to her. To give her all these options, and a sense of normalcy she’d been denied.

“To being a girlfriend—to having a boyfriend. To dating and doing all these…to doing all of this. It’s…exciting and strange and…I’m not sure if I shouldn’t be doing more.” The uncertainty in her voice humbled him.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend either,” he told her.

“But…”

“Peggy?” He kept his focus on the road, but he couldn’t miss the tiniest pang at her name. It didn’t hurt anymore. There would always be an ache, but the hurt was absent. “We were at war, Nat. We flirted—and she kissed me once. But there was never time for dating or dancing or being more than allies.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiled. “It’s okay. It…I’ve made my peace with it.” And he had.

“Do you feel like we’re doing some of this backwards?” Not an unfair question. The wind had grown chillier, but the rain continued to hold off.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But I want you as my partner, my teammate, and my friend. I’m privileged to have those things—the girlfriend is just…icing on the cake.” He wanted her, that wasn’t a question. A part of him had even half-thought tonight would be the night. But he was keeping something from her and he couldn’t… not yet. Not with any secrets between them. She deserved more than deception or lies. Even if it was a little lie.

“Frosting…so you have a food kink.” The comment pulled a startled laugh out of him and he shook his head.

“You’re terrible.”

“Sometimes,” she said unrepentant. They were just crossing the bridge when lightning flashed overhead. “But you like me that way.”

“I like you every way,” he snorted. “Hold on, I don’t want you getting rained on.” He added a little speed and kept his eye on the sky.

“Steve,” she said, her voice sobering. “We’ve got company.”

He flicked a look to the side mirror. “Truck?”

“Been with us since we left Prospect Park.” He didn’t recognize the vehicle, but that didn’t mean anything. They were angling north through Lower Manhattan; he took a turn, switching his route to take them deeper into the Bowery. It could be a coincidence…

“Still with us.” Her voice remained calm and even. “Angle west towards Washington Square Park then up through Greenwich and Chelsea. If they stay with us, keep going up 8th to Times Square.”

It was a plan and one he couldn’t argue with, so he leaned into it. The SUV stuck with them, and he noticed the second one before she tapped his hip. The relaxation in his muscles vanished. These guys could be any one. They could be after him. Captain America was noticeable, and it wasn’t something he wanted to consider. Their date was not going to get Nat into trouble; he refused to contemplate that.

On 8th, the SUVs were still with them despite the thickening traffic. They were keeping their distance, preventing him from seeing who was behind the wheel.

“We’re fine, they are likely trying to get a look at us…if they are trying to do anything.” The conversational tone reminded him of when they were in the mall and she told him the first rule of going on the run was to walk, not run. So rather than peel out of the traffic, he slowed and rested a foot against the concrete when they had to wait for a light. Nat rested her chin against his shoulder, seemingly relaxed. Her sense of ease helped contain the tension ratcheting up inside of him. If they were coming for her…

“If they close on us…”

“We’ll handle it,” she promised him. “As partners.” In other words, she wasn’t ditching him. He suppressed a scowl. “Call Tony,” she suggested. “Friday can scan the street cameras and give us a look at who our friends are.”

He tapped his comm, switching the channel. “Friday…”

“Yes, Captain Rogers?”

“We’re heading up 8th, almost to Times Square…” Which was loaded with cameras and people. The civilians could create complications, but Nat had angled them right toward the best place to get a look at them even while forcing them to keep back or tip their hand. “We’ve got two SUVs on our tail, they are about two car lengths back, maintaining their distance but staying on us.”

“Tracking them now, Cap,” Tony cut in. “I’m on my way…”

“Won’t that confirm we’re the targets?”

“Maybe,” Tony said, but his tone was all business rather than flip. “It’s also not unusual for Iron Man to make a splashy appearance and it’s Halloween, Times Square and about to rain—”

As if to punctuate his words, lightning flashed again. Tony had a point. “You’re going to distract them.”

“That is the plan,” Tony said. “Get ready to slip out of there and if you have to leave the bike, we can get it later.”

“Here’s hoping this is nothing,” he said as traffic lurched forward and he eased over to move between two of the cars. It was a maneuver motorcycles had the luxury of.

Another flash of lightning, and then came a spatter of rain to sting at them with the breeze. Movement behind in the side mirror showed someone getting out of one of the SUVs.

“Dammit.”

“Take it easy,” Natasha said, squeezing his hip. “Three cars up—see what I see?”

He turned his attention forward…there hanging out of the sunroof of a limo were a pair of Black Widows. Pushing forward, he crawled through the traffic to get closer. A roar went up ahead, like a crowd cheering, and Tony zoomed down the street—low enough the boom of his passing vibrated the cars and set off a couple of their alarms.

The Widows in the limo started screaming, and Nat laughed. “Forgive me for this…” He cocked a look back at her, then she rose up on the footpads and started waving her arm whooping.

It was everything he could do not to laugh or to stare. Then Tony zipped past them again, and more shouts went up from the sidewalk. Cars were slowing to a stop and people were waving, some were honking, and a generous few were cursing. Yet Tony put a show and then one of the Widows ahead flashed her boobs at Iron Man, and Nat threw head back and laughed.

When he zoomed in again, this time Tony made a point of stopping at the limo and gave the ladies a thumbs up. Nat gave another little “girly” scream that even if someone had pointed a gun at her head, Steve would have sworn she could never make. Iron Man dipped down toward those Widows then said, “Sorry ladies—I only want the real thing.” Then he zoomed over to them.

In the meanwhile, Steve had kept watch on the SUV passenger turned pedestrian closing in on them. The guy skidded to a halt as Tony hovered in front of them. “Huh—a Cap and a Widow…” then he cocked his head sideways, the gold mask almost looking smug or maybe that was just the guy inside. “Not bad, though sweetheart…” he turned to focus on Nat. “I’ve seen the real thing up close…and you need a little more effort to make that work.” Then he flipped his mask open. “That said, want to ditch the faux Cap and let me buy you a drink? I’ve got a few fantasies we could play out.”

For his part, Steve found it actually hard to glare at him when he wanted to laugh. Tony had amped his smarm meter.

Nat laughed, and blew him a kiss. “Only if I can bring my boyfriend, Mr. Stark…” And the little girl squeal in her voice actually made Steve’s ears hurt and Tony’s wince wasn’t manufactured either.

Their follower backed off another step.

“Sorry, honey. I don’t swing that way.”

She let out a snort, laugh, guffaw that almost made Steve bust out laughing.

Tony gaped at her… “Damn…it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

Shouts ahead _seemed_ to attract his attention and he flipped his helmet closed.

“Need to run.” Then he was zipping away and his voice filtered through the comm even as the pedestrian retreated to the SUV. “We’re running the plates, they’re rentals, and the guy on the street is doesn’t read back to law enforcement. Tagging the cars, and we’ll see where they go, but it looks like you’re in the clear.”

“Thanks Tony,” Steve said quietly.

“Anytime, Cap. I'm keeping eyes on you both.”

With Tony’s absence, traffic got moving, and then the rain started sheeting down. The SUVs crawled after them, but didn’t try to pursue when Steve pushed it through traffic. The rain was more than an excuse to get them moving.

He still took the long way back to Columbus Circle, and Tony spent some time winging it through the skies, watching their tail. In the meanwhile, Nat clung to him and the massive adrenaline rush left Steve almost shaking, but her occasional peal of laughter ignited his. At least one of them was having fun. When he ducked them into the garage and parked, he twisted to kiss her hard, then said, “Never…ever…for the love of all that’s holy or to get us out of trouble, make that squealing sound again.”

Her expression softened, and it was her turn to kiss him. They were soaking wet, they’d narrowly avoided one calamity or another, and he’d ripped open his soul to confess the things he was afraid of and nearly ruined their date. But at the end of the night, she was with him, making him smile and she’d had his back, all the way.

In all honesty, he felt closer to her than he had before. There was an understanding in her eyes when she looked at him and it made him want to tell her everything.

Girlfriend.

“Hot cocoa?” She offered and his grin widened.

Correction, the best girlfriend.

His best girl.

Suddenly, he understood Bucky’s possessiveness on a visceral level. It simmered inside of Steve, a hot and prescient thing. He’d been ready to pound those guys on the street, and he wouldn’t hesitate if they came for her. If anyone came for her. He didn’t want to start a war, but he’d damn well finish it.


	34. Puzzles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile back at the Compound and the Tower...

**Chapter Thirty-Four**

**Puzzles**

**Bucky**

 

 

At first, James kept the research unspecific, more to narrow his search window. He asked Friday about the availability of satellite imagery from 1970 to 1973. Four years was a wide window, but she’d _welcomed_ him to the seventies and then later they’d had to run. It also felt right. One problem from his years as the Soldier, most of the decades tended to bleed together except for clothing clues.

He didn’t really know clothes.

While there were some satellite images available, they weren’t the high definition quality of today. That was fine. He wanted a good look at the terrain for Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and maybe even Utah. He didn’t think they would have gone all the way to California. They definitely avoided the East Coast. That much he remembered.

If he closed his eyes and tried to picture it, he could hear her speaking in French as they negotiated the purchase price for a vehicle. There was nothing about her slender form that indicated pregnancy, but _he_ had been aware of everything about her. Even the subtlest of changes in her demeanor put him on alert.

She didn’t relax at all that first week, and it kept him on edge and awake. The Soldier required little in the way of sleep. A fortunate byproduct of his conditioning, serum, and probably the time spent in cryo. Hell, he barely slept right now and usually only if she were right there next to him.

Once Friday provided him with the images, he asked for scans of standardized road maps from that time period. What he wouldn’t give to have one to actually unfold and spread across a table. For now, he had to do with a wireframe constructed by Friday.

“Sergeant Barnes, if you could provide me with the exact details of your search, I might be better able to facilitate it.” It wasn’t the first time Friday had given him the nudge. She’d agreed to lock the search to his voice print, and indicated the search would remain private unless she deemed a threat to Stark or the Avengers. He was in the clear on that one.

“Well ma’am, if I had the exact details, I wouldn’t need you to search. So this layout, the roads listed and detailed—they are exactly the same as they would have been in 1970?”

“Correct.”

“Okay, update it for 1971.” The wireframe underwent the barest of alterations. They’d definitely landed in Toronto. They’d negotiated the purchase of the vehicle in Mississauga. They’d spent three days in the town of Hamilton—where Natalia had new papers made for them. He could see their first names—Jason and Nancy, but the last name just blurred. Maybe he hadn’t needed to remember the last name. The first names though—they had to call each other by those names.

Nancy.

Not Natalia.

Hamilton wasn’t far from Niagara Falls—and he’d taken her there. They’d leaned against the railing and stared at the tremendous force of the water tumbling over into the edge,

_“We’re like that…” She said, pointing to the falls themselves. Bundled in a heavy coat, and gloves, his arm wasn’t visible. She’d cut his hair, shaping it more away from his face, but still long. Her own was nearly down to her waist, but she kept it in twin braids and wore these small round, red colored lenses sunglasses. He’d refused the pair she tried to slip on him._

_“We’re falling?” He’d asked._

_“No…we’re rushing, changing—and a force of nature. We can’t let anything stop us—not the rocks, the drop, or what’s waiting below.”_

_They weren’t speaking Russian, or even French. Only English unless they had to negotiate with someone. Her English was nearly flawless, and her accent indeterminable. But he’d caught the familiar strains of New York in a couple taking pictures on their honeymoon. It had provoked familiarity, so he’d leaned into those sibilant sounds._

_Natalia—no, Nancy—had watched the couple taking pictures and then looked at him with an idea…she’d bought a camera._

James pressed two fingers to his forehead. She’d bought a camera, and film. They’d taken pictures of each other, and asked someone else to take a photograph of them. It was a Polaroid camera, an SX-70—it developed its own photos and Natalia had been delighted with the instant set of snaps she’d created.

“Friday, the Polaroid SX-70, when was it developed?”

If the AI thought his random questions were problematic, she didn’t say anything. “This model was available from 1972 to 1981…”

“Can you show me a picture of one.”

The camera appeared on the holo screen and James had to sit down. He’d been pacing, but the camera—yes, it was the same one he’d seen in her hands and the look of mischief in her eyes as she lowered it after snapping a ‘candid’ of him. He’d wanted to destroy the picture but she’d hugged it to herself. Those types of mementoes were dangerous and could leave a trail.

“Update the wireframe road map for 1972.”

After their papers were ready, they left Hamilton and moved west, crossing over into the United States via Detroit.

“Friday are there records for border crossings from Canada to the U.S. via Detroit for the year of 1972?” Their papers listed them as American citizens. If asked, they came in via Niagara Falls—and oh look, they had pictures to prove it. They’d wanted to avoid being flagged as foreign nationals entering the country. The Cold War was still firmly in place and their Russian origins…

James snorted. Russian origins, he was American and if he just married her, he could have provided her access to a path to citizenship. His gut churned, but he shoved that aside. They were pretending to be married, and she’d even created marriage paperwork. Even if they’d gone through with a legal ceremony, they would have been marrying their IDs, not themselves…

“Incomplete records, Sergeant Barnes. From 1952 to 2009, passports were not required to travel between countries in North America including Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”

“So they wouldn’t have documented people entering the country?”

“Not via the Canadian border. Most records are spotty, indicating only those declined entry, not those admitted. At least not in the records I can access.”

Fuck. James bowed his head, of course they didn’t keep specific records. Natalia would have considered it. She wanted them to vanish, with those new IDs, they would have disappeared once in the U.S. The car they’d purchased in Mississauga was abandoned in Chicago. They’d used cash to buy a car directly from the owner, after spotting the for sale sign on it. He’d signed the title over to them, but if they never filed it—they added another layer to their disappearance.

From Chicago, they’d continued west and he closed his eyes, trying to picture the road. They’d taken turns driving, though he’d wanted to do most of it. He wanted her to rest. The Soldier hadn’t understood pregnancy per se, and even as James had woken with each passing mile, it was the Soldier who put Natalia’s safety first.

Had she gotten ill at all? Memories of her sick to her stomach didn’t spring to mind. She was far more careful in her selection of foods, particularly since they didn’t want to linger in restaurants or anywhere someone might remember them. She altered her looks each step of the way, in many places—he’d remained with the car while she went inside.

They purchased everything with cash.

West.

Always west.

What had she said then?

_“There are places here where they have no records of population, or military bases. There are trees, and grass, and mountains, and sky.” They were laying on the hood of the car, their backs propped against the windshield as they stared up the stars. It was cold, the weather was turning and there was a chill in the air. The cold had been following them from Canada. He’d pulled a blanket out of the backseat to lay over her, but she claimed the engine beneath her kept her plenty warm. “Have you ever seen so many stars?”_

_He glanced up. The Soldier hadn’t paid attention to stars, unless it was to check weather conditions or his position using sky mapping. So he answered simply, “No.”_

_After a while, she said, “Are you angry with me?”_

_The question puzzled him. “Why would I be angry with you?”_

_“Because we had to run.”_

_He turned the idea over in his mind, then shook his head. “You were in danger, correct?”_

_Though she licked her lips and nodded slowly, she added, “I don’t think they would have hurt_ me _, but…”_

_His gaze dipped to where the blanket still disguised her nearly flat belly. There was the faintest of bumps there, she’d put his hand on it. “They would have hurt the child.” It wasn’t a question._

_“I think they would want to make the child like us.”_

_And that was enough of an answer for the Soldier. “You do not want that…I do not want that either. No, I am not angry with you. Running was the right decision.” As long as he could protect them. They needed a secure holding, a place he could fortify, with good sight lines and traps._

_A lot of traps._

A tear traced down his cheek, and he rubbed it away. He hadn’t been the warmest son of a bitch, but he’d put her first. He’d put their child first even if he hadn’t truly grasped what the child meant. James blew out a breath. A child…if this wasn’t all bullshit and so far he didn’t have any reason to think it was…somewhere out there he had a kid.

They did.

A kid he hadn’t remembered or known.

Fuck.

“Okay…what about land purchase records for Colorado, Montana…and let’s say Wyoming.” Those three states were the most likely candidates. “Is there a way to do a search for land purchases in 1972 and 1973…” The weather had been turning. It was at least autumn. Even with the time taken to drive from Detroit to any of those three states, they’d have been there before winter. The Soldier would have wanted her shelter to be secured before the weather turned again…they were both used to heavy snow and frozen conditions, but if they could have buckled down with supplies, they would have been invisible for months—the months critical for her to come to full term.

“Land titles and purchases could be tracked through the tax offices…” Friday suggested.

And for the first time, James had to laugh. Who knew he could be grateful for taxes?

“Okay—” Would she have stuck to the IDs she’d created in Canada or made them new ones?

They were on the road, limited access to materials and supplies, but she was Natalia. If he knew nothing else about her…he knew she was the probably one of the most resourceful people he knew.

“Start in late 1972, probably—after September and no later than February of 1973.” Even he thought that was a stretch. She couldn’t have been more than two months pregnant when they ran, by February of ‘73, she would have been seven to eight months—too far along. “Belay that—make it late 72, from September to December. We’re searching purchases of land…at least one hundred acres, with a single or no structure on the property, minimum distance to any local towns would have to be fifty miles.” It was probably farther. Fifty miles could be crossed on foot in a couple of days if you were really fucking determined. He’d want a hell of a lot farther between her and people.

“Add mountain region, uneven elevation. Unlikely that there were utilities running to the property.” Nothing that could be tracked. Firewood could be cut for heat, and the walls insulated to help contain it. Both of them could hunt for food, the cold would give them a place to store perishables, and he could have gone for books or even a radio—those signals were still available so she could have music to listen to. “Don’t automatically discount the ones with utilities, but we’ll move the ones without to a priority.”

He could see the woodpile stacking up under the eaves of the slanted overhang. Rounded logs, interlocking corners, and the crosshatched boards making up the porch. Four steps, the house was elevated and placed on strong supports for balancing against the uneven terrain. A stone fireplace taking up one entire wall—a change he’d made.

The more details he unearthed, the less he thought this could be any kind of planted memory…and yet…

“Water…there would be a water source, at the very least a well.” They may have had to heat water manually, but that wasn’t as unfamiliar to them as it might be to some or as foreign as it would be to people now. Cold or tepid water baths were often all they’d had to make do with on some missions. Still—awareness of how the changes in her physiology would affect her, he would have wanted to prepare for it.

The only bad plan was lacking one.

“Last parameter—don’t discount other properties but move to the top of the list any purchases with the first names of Jason or Nancy.”

“Understood. I will alert you when I have completed the title searches.”

Then there was nothing to do but wait. He’d been putting the pieces together bit by bit since they returned from Louisiana. Twice, he’d nearly told her everything—once on the flight home and then again in the shower after he’d lost himself in her.

As much as he wanted to tell her, to ask her if she remembered—to dig and see what pieces she possessed, he couldn’t. If he was wrong? To get her hopes up or to tease her with even the possibility would be cruel.

Another tear slipped down his cheek and he swiped it away as he stood. If he was right…he had to find the way to tell her they’d had a child decades before and they’d both had to abandon her. He’d left to buy them time, and it had been—more than a year after that he’d found her on the Amalfi Coast, before she’d killed the soldiers in his unit—before she’d lowered the gun she’d trained on him.

His orders were to bring her alive…and broken.

Shoving out of their floor, he took the elevator to the training rooms and crossed it blindly to the speed bag.

The feeling of her bones snapping under his hands haunted him.

Slam.

Worse, the rasped whisper of, “It’s okay…” as she repeated it over and over again, offering him comfort as he broke her?

Slam.

He pounded against it, trying to batter the memories back. He’d dragged her back to them, broken and immobile.

Slam.

He’d put her in the damn chair.

Slam.

And she’d smiled at him…

Slam.

“It’s okay…” she’d whispered.

Slam.

Then she’d smiled when they threw the switch…

Slam.

Smiled because…

Slam, the bag ripped off and flew across to hit the wall.

Panting he stared after it.

She’d smiled because she won. They never got to ask her any questions, and then they stripped away her memories—wiped her. Or at least attempted to which meant their little girl was safe.

Eyes burning, he turned to the next bag and started slamming his fists into it.

Even when she lost…she found a way to win.

Slam.

 

 

**Wanda**

 

Breakfast at the Compound was still a bit uncomfortable, but Wanda forced herself to get up every morning and head out there. More often than not, she found Vision already waiting as if anticipating her arrival. Some days, Rhodey was there, pouring coffee or Sam had eggs scrambling on the stove. Even if she arrived first, the latter pair would be along shortly.

Before Clint went to the Tower to help out Stark, he’d also come to breakfast and if she were honest—he and Sam made it easier for her to be there. She and Vis seemed to be in this awkward place, and it was probably her fault. They used to have the most incredible conversations, and now she wasn’t sure what to say to him most days. Rhodey’s injuries also made her uncomfortable, because they’d happened during the course of a fight she’d been on the other side of.

In all fairness, Rhodey treated her with nothing but kindness and still, she wanted to find a way to apologize to him. When she headed out to the kitchen that morning, however, she wasn’t expecting Tony Stark to be sitting there sipping coffee and reading something on a StarkPad.

It was the first time she’d seen him since he’d stopped at the Raft, and she’d been so out of it then. Her steps faltering, she hesitated at the entrance. Maybe she should just go back to her room.

He chose that moment, however, to look up and she took a deep breath to steel herself. “Mr. Stark…”

“Wanda…” He frowned and set his coffee and StarkPad down. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

There was a hesitance to his actions as he stood and it struck her—he wasn’t any more comfortable with this encounter than she was. Even though she’d expected to see him since she’d come back, she hadn’t. Sam, Clint, even Steve as well as Vis and Rhodey, but no Stark. The closest she’d come to him was their aborted mission to Louisiana and he’d not been on the quinjet with them.

“I usually make tea,” she told him, taking a few steps toward the stove.

“I can put the water on,” he offered, but he was already in motion. There was an electric kettle on the counter—a new addition. Before, she and Natasha had often used the whistling kettle. “I ordered this in when I realized we didn’t have one here,” he said over his shoulder. “Be sure to let Friday know if you want to change up the teas.” He’d pulled down the rack with the wide selection. “Bruce used to stock them at the Tower…and I’m not sure who ordered them here.”

Folding her arms, Wanda stayed on the far side of the counter. She could do this. He was making an effort, so could she. Even if he brought up Banner. She hadn’t known the scientist well and after the incident South Africa, she had always been a little grateful she’d never had to face him after the evening Vision came to life. The feeling of his arms around her throat and the fact he said he could snap her neck and never have to turn green…

That had been her fault. She’d—she’d pulled his deepest fear out of his mind and thrown it in his face. Being lost to the other guy entirely, where he was only the other guy and Bruce Banner disappeared. There was a certain discomfort that always accompanied that thought. It had turned Banner inside out and released the Hulk to rampage.

Bruce Banner had abandoned the Avengers after Sokovia. Though Wanda was in a minority to be grateful to not be around the rage monster, she hadn’t missed the way Steve worried about Natasha, even if the other woman never revealed an ounce of pain over the issue.

“Natasha used to order them,” she said finally, forcing her mind to the here and now. “But there is plenty…” It had only been a few months since they were all here, before the Accords. Well all except Stark, he’d been more part-time and support, not living at the Compound or spending too much time with them other than the occasional visit.

“Huh,” he said, then eyed the tea bags again thoughtfully. “That makes sense.” He flipped open a cabinet and pulled down a mug that said _I don’t give a hex_ and set it on the counter. Wanda hid a flash of surprise at his choosing her favorite mug. Had he just guessed it? Or… “So…how are things going?” He moved away from the counter so she could choose her tea.

“Well, I think…it’s been very quiet. I spoke to the Committee yesterday.” She’d actually dreaded that meeting, but it had gone much easier than she anticipated. Rhodey and Vision had gone with her. She’d half-expected Steve or Stark to be there, but Rhodey had said it looked better that she voluntarily appeared on her own.

“I heard,” Tony said slowly. “I was going to show up, but I didn’t want to distract them from listening to you. Did it go okay?”

“Don’t you already know?” It came out a little more snappish than she intended, and she winced. “Sorry…”

“It’s okay,” Tony said, then actually chuckled. “This is awkward as hell…so let me rip the Band-Aid off for both of us.”

She bit the inside of her lip. Was this the point where Stark told her he hadn’t wanted her back in the first place?

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you _why_ I had Vision keeping you here.” The unexpected words floored her. “I should have involved you more in what was going on. I thought—I thought I was protecting you. I didn’t want you to be afraid of the fact they wanted to arrest you, and that they were discussing ways to neutralize you. If I kept you here, and had Vision on site—I thought I could keep you safe. Then when things settled down, I could persuade them to change their approach where you were concerned.”

Of all the things she thought Tony Stark would say to her, this was not even on her radar.

“In hindsight, not my best plan. Didn’t really give you a reason to trust me when you found out that Vision wouldn’t let you leave.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, a pained look etched into his features before he straightened and faced her again. “For that, I’m sorry…and I’m even more sorry they did what they did at the Raft. That was never my idea—never even in the realm of ideas I thought they would do with the break in the Accords.”

“Thank you,” she told him quietly. “I—I don’t know if telling me would have helped, but I would like to think it could have. I have blamed you for a lot of things…” She struggled with the next part. “Maybe I will always blame you on some level, I was…we were very young when our parents died and the name on that bomb—it has haunted me for a long time.”

She licked her lips, trying to keep her pulse from rabbiting away from her. Be deliberate. Think through each step. Act. Don’t react.

“Natasha told me once that I can choose how I act. That there are things we do when we are young that can be forgiven—because we are young. But that as we get older, we have to understand our choices and to own them—you may have come from a family that built bombs. Maybe you designed bigger and better ones. But you did not fire that bomb into our building and you did not kill my parents.” The words stuck in her throat, scratching it up as they escaped one at a time. “I’m sorry that I blamed you, and that…when I realized you were…locking me in my room…I assumed you wanted to punish me.”

The pained expression in his eyes was hard to ignore. “If I could take back every single weapon Stark Industries ever sold—I would. I was an idiot—an arrogant kid who didn’t understand what Obadiah was doing or that…the weapons I wanted to create to protect our troops could also be used to hurt others. It was a stupid, blind way to live.”

“But you haven’t lived that way since Afghanistan.” She knew the story. Even in Sokovia, they’d heard about it—heard about the Iron man.

“No,” he said slowly. “I still want to protect people though.”

“I guess we are both learning then…” Was it enough? For either of them? Maybe not. But… “I choose to believe we can learn. That is what I told the Committee. I also told them I cannot control other people’s fears, only my own.” She lifted a finger and let the power inside her swirl around her finger tips. In some ways, she didn’t understand even half of what she could do. “I can only try to understand myself, and to be the best I can be. It has never been my goal to hurt anyone.”

Even when she hated Stark, she hadn’t wanted to _hurt_ him. Tapping into his mind, triggering what haunted him—it had haunted her. She’d seen them all dead, all of the Avengers and seen the terror in his face. Knowing all of them as she did now, that image lingered in her thoughts and dreams as well.

“You proved that when you turned on Ultron,” he told her. “When you helped us save the people in Sokovia and fought against him.”

When Pietro died.

She nodded a little. The kettle clicked off, startling her at the small sound seeming so loud in the silence. Choosing a tea bag, she glanced over at Stark to find him blowing out a long breath before he picked up his coffee cup. “It is odd, don’t you think, that both of us are struggling to talk because we want this to work?”

He laughed a little. “I find it odd that I am struggling to talk period. Verbal tends to be my thing.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she murmured, then poured the boiling water over the bag in the cup. “But I think we can call this a good start?”

“I’d like that,” Tony said slowly.

“As would I.”

The silence fell again, and a door closed down the hall. The heavy sound of footsteps, accompanied by the faintest hint of whirring told her who it was.

“Sourpatch!” Tony greeted him. “Looking good—want to look better?”

Rhodey groaned, but there was a smile on his face. “I forgot today was Tony Stark’s Build-a-Rhodey day.”

“Better than Lincoln logs,” Tony retorted and Wanda smiled. The genuine affection in Stark’s voice could not be manufactured, nor could the patient welcome in Rhodey’s manner.

“Tell you what, pour the coffee then tell me what you want the braces to do today and I’ll think about it,” Rhodey told him. “Good morning, Wanda.”

“Good morning, Colonel Rhodes…”

“Rhodey,” he reminded her. “We’re not going back to formalities.”

She smiled again. “Yes, you’re right.” She was still a little nervous.

“Did Wanda tell you how awesome she was with the Committee yesterday, Tones?” Rhodey said as Tony poured him a cup of coffee.

“She might have mentioned it,” Tony said, sliding her a small smile and she ducked her head to grin.

They weren’t friends yet—but this wasn’t so bad.

“Hey, full house!” Sam greeted as he joined them. “You staying for breakfast, Stark?”

“I could eat,” Tony sounded guarded again.

“Sam makes wonderful omelets,” Wanda told him, carrying her tea mug over to the table.

“Is that a hint, Miss Wanda?”

“Not at all,” Wanda told him, settling down and choosing to sit nearer to Tony rather than on the far side of the table. He’d offered the olive branch, she would accept it. “It’s a request. I would very much like the spinach and mushroom omelet.”

“I can do that. Rhodey?”

“Throw some ham on it and I’ll have the same,” Rhodey said adding some sugar to the coffee Tony brought him. “Tony likes tomatoes in his and ham, too. Maybe some hash browns and toast.”

“I can cut the potatoes,” Tony offered and there was a pause, Sam twisted away from the fridge eggs in hand and Rhodey blinked at him in surprise. Tony shrugged. “What? I said I’d cut them, he still has to cook them. Any food poisoning is on him.”

The beat lasted a second longer, then Sam laughed. “Well all right, but I’m particular about how we cut the potatoes…nice and even.”

“Uh huh,” Tony grunted, but he dragged out the bag of potatoes. “How about you just take them how I cut them?”

“That works, too.”

The banter wasn’t forced, even if it wasn’t totally natural yet—but it was good. Wanda glanced at Rhodey and he grinned before hiding his smile behind his coffee. “So, Tony—since you’ve got time on your hands…”

“Honey Bear if you want an upgrade, all you have to do is ask…”

When Vis entered, she smiled at him and he nodded to her. Suddenly, the atmosphere ventured closer to home than it had been since before the Accords, but there were still some that were missing.

Still, they were a lot closer.

 

 

**Clint**

 

 

PT was grueling enough, and though he complained about it—Clint never battled the therapists. If anything, he only pushed when they didn’t push him hard enough. Three weeks since the surgery, and his shoulder was stiff but getting stronger each day. The wheelchair was no longer mandatory. They’d offered him a cane for assistance, but the bones were knitting well and Dr. Cho had given him a couple of treatments in the cradle to help fuse them. The rest would just take time.

After two hours of walking, stretching, pulling, and lifting, in addition to alternating ice, heat, and ultrasound to help with the scar tissue in his shoulder, they advised he take it easy for the rest of the day. Which was why he was on his way down to the gym. While he probably should avoid the treadmill, he could use the walking track to just get a few more steps in. The last thing he needed was muscle atrophy on top of all his other problems.

Maybe after, he’d go unearth Nat from wherever she’d hidden herself and make her play video games with him. It had been a while since they spent an entire day battling it out and she was damn good at the first person shooters.

Almost as good as he was.

He half-expected her to be in the gym, but it was quiet save for the steady slam of fists against one of the speed bags. The hammering force didn’t sound like her or Cap for that matter. Easing inside, he leaned more on the cane than he wanted to admit. On the other hand, maybe they could trick the cane out. Having an inoffensive offensive weapon wasn’t a bad thing.

Across the gym, Barnes was currently driving his fists into a speed bag—the last one remaining hanging out of the six that were usually there. The other five were in various forms of wreckage against the far wall. When the sixth one exploded and went flying, Barnes paused breathing heavily and staring at the destroyed bags. Then he turned and Clint tracked him stalking over to where a stack were kept in the far corner for Cap, the only other person Clint knew that was that damn hard on the bags.

Nat was known for destroying them, but usually only one at a time and it took fists and feet.

Clearing his throat as he moved, he didn’t miss the other man’s sudden stiffening or the way he cut a look over his shoulder. Not only was the man pissed off and working off some steam, he’d been too preoccupied to notice Clint’s entry.

“You okay?” He asked without bothering to pretend he hadn’t noticed something was wrong. After his conversation with Nat the day before, he had questions.

A lot of questions.

Both for Barnes and Rogers, but there hadn’t been time to corner either man. He also had to move carefully about this. Nat wouldn’t be thrilled if he intervened, and he could handle her not talking to him for a time. She wouldn’t get pissed, she’d just shut him out. As much as he wouldn’t like it, he could live with it.

Her getting hurt, however, was unacceptable. She didn’t open herself up like this and when she said _I’m happy…_ every alarm bell in him went off. Nat had been satisfied, settled, and even content once—but she’d never used the word happy.

“Fine,” Barnes lied to him evenly as he grasped two bags and carried them over to hang them up.

“I can see that,” Clint commented, not missing the blood on his right hand. “That’s why you’re on a killing spree where the bags are concerned.”

Not looking at him, Barnes swiped some of the sweat off his face with a towel, then settled into a striking pattern. The steady tattoo of hits wasn’t a deterrent. Clint moved over to the wall, and leaned against it. He should probably sit, but standing was good practice and leaning wouldn’t kill him.

He let Barnes kill off the next two bags before he said, “You’re venting a lot of frustration on those bags and it doesn’t seem to be helping.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the other man told him. The ice in his tone cautioned Clint to cease pushing him.

“It does, because if it’s not working, it’s just going to get worse.” And his issues with the questionable state of relations between Barnes, Rogers, and Nat aside—Barnes had suffered plenty. Clint still had his issues with the man regarding his shooting Nat back in Odessa, but he could set those aside and had been since learning more of the assassin’s story.

“Look…” Barnes paused mid-stalk toward the replacement bags and eyed him. “You don’t need to worry.”

“Didn’t say I was worried about you.” Clint let that hang there a moment and the other man put his hands on his hips, and bowed his head.

“Natalia is also fine,” he said, getting his panting under control.

Except… “You hope,” he added to the statement for him, and didn’t flinch when Barnes fixed him with a hard stare. “If you need to lie to yourself, that’s fine. I get it. I’ve been there. But don’t lie to me.” Not when it was obvious all over he wasn’t fine. The question was, what happened?

“Barton…” He began, then stopped and shook his head. Pushing a hand through his sweat soaked hair, Bucky exhaled. “Clint…Natalia _is_ fine. This—is something I need to work out.”

They were getting warmer. “Sometimes working things out means getting an unbiased point of view.” How many times had he said the same thing to Nat? “It’s easy to forget you’re still adjusting to a lot of changes—not the least of which is your freedom and current living situation.” It was a push, but sometimes they needed the push. Barnes didn’t seem as divorced from his emotions has Nat had always behaved, but there was temperature gauge warning that threatened a meltdown might be imminent if the guy didn’t release some of the pressure.

“My living situation?” He hung a new bag, then faced him again. “What’s wrong with it?”

“You. Rogers. Nat.” Clint laid it out. “You do the math.”

“We’re fine.” Clipped, inflexible, and stiff. “Do you have a problem with it?”

“I’m not the one beating the crap out of speed bags.” Not answering wasn’t an answer here.

“Now you’re evading. So which one of us do you have the problem with? Me or Steve?” Just like that, all that cool rage focused on him. It was a moderate improvement.

“Didn’t say I had a problem with either of you.” Clint tested the waters. “You’re both adjusting—you being independent and functional, and Steve calibrating to being back and having you in his life and Nat’s lives.”

With a shake of his head, Barnes laughed. “So it’s me. I’m not going to hurt Natalia. Not again.” But there was a bitterness in those words.

“So you’ve said—and man, I could keep pushing your buttons to wind you up, and trust me, the temptation is real, but I’m not here to give you grief about Nat. You look like you need a friend…” As much as he’d like to take him out behind the woodshed, he and Rogers both, and deliver a stinging lesson, it wasn’t going to happen. Not in his current condition, and not considering their abilities. Still, Nat had been his to protect for far too long to surrender it just to a pair of super soldiers who happened along no matter what Nat’s history was with either of them.

That said, protecting her also meant making sure neither of these guys went off a cliff physically or emotionally. So…here he was.

“I’ll be fine,” Bucky told him as he returned to the corner and reloaded each of the hooks with a new bag. It was closer to the truth than his earlier statement.

Fine. Change in tactics. “Well, I could use a friend.”

Barnes shot him a look. “I’m sure you have plenty to choose from…”

“Maybe, but not all of them care about Nat the same way.” Yes. It was dirty pool to use her this way, but the alarm bells Nat’s _happy_ declaration had set off the day before were ringing again.

Frowning,Barnes stared at him. “What do you know about Natalia?”

“A lot,” Clint told him frankly.

“Fine…” The man grabbed a hoodie off the floor and dragged it on over his sweating frame. “Roof?”

It was like taking candy from a baby. “Now you’re just stealing a page out of my book.”

The ride up was quiet, and though he stood perfectly still the air around Barnes seemed to practically vibrate. Outside, it was overcast and cool, but not unpleasant. Clint made his way over to one of the lounge chairs and eased down onto it. His leg, hip and back were all protesting his earlier workout and he ignored it. Instead of sitting, Barnes dragged out a cigarette and lit it. Then he paced over to the rail, and finally back again.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“Whatever it is that’s eating at you,” Clint told him honestly. “Nat sat up here yesterday and told me she was happy, and now you’re down there shredding bags. So spill—what’s going on? And how does it involve her?”

“My relationship with Natalia is not your concern.”

“I’m making it my concern. That’s a lot of rage you’re holding onto and I don’t want it turning in her direction.” Yes, he was pushing him. But the fact he was alone and reacting like that said either it had something directly to do with Steve and Nat, or he was hiding it from them.

Neither was a good place for the man to be.

Instead of glaring at him, the other man glared off the roof into the distance. “My rage is not at her…it would _never_ be at her.” The quiet assurance should have been comforting.

“So who is it at?”

“Hydra. The KGB. The Red Room. Zola. Pierce. Leonid. Alexei…” All entities and people who were gone or dead. At least Hydra better be gone, but they were as far as Clint knew.

“Memories?”

“Yeah,” Barnes said, deflating and sinking down to sit on the edge of one of the other chairs.

“How bad?” Because the past had a way of ambushing the present.

“I don’t know yet,” Barnes admitted.

“Sometimes talking about it—as cheesy as it sounds helps. As much as I never wanted to talk about what Loki did to me—when Nat bullied it out of me, it lessened the poison, some.”

The other man studied him. “Did you hurt Natalia when the other controlled you?”

“Yeah,” Clint said slowly. “I tried to anyway…” If he wanted some truth he was going to have to give it. “Attacked her. She kicked my ass…but I tried to put an arrow through her, then a knife. She brought me back from the edge, but not before I spilled her secrets to a monster who tried to use them against her.”

“I have hurt her many times…”

“But never under your own steam.” Pointing that out might seem obvious, but sometimes you needed to hear it. He’d never hurt Nat, not of his own volition. Bucky didn’t seem much different in that regard.

“I never want to hurt her,” he said slowly.

“But something you remembered says you already have or—” He could read between the lines.

The other man didn’t answer, he just took a long drag on the cigarette. His gaze a thousand miles away—or maybe only a few depending on where Nat was at the moment.

“Look—we barely know each other. But Nat’s my best friend, if you need help—say the word.” He’d joked about opening a wayward home for former Russian assassins. “Some days are going to be worse than others. Making peace with your past may not be possible, but you can forgive yourself for it.” Not that Nat ever had, but he tried and whether she ever saw everything she’d done as atonement or not, he’d never stop trying.

“You are Natalia’s friend first?” The question mark hung off that sentence like a dare.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “But if you need a vault, I can do that.”

“Even if what I tell you has to do with her?” Damn the guy really needed someone to talk to.

“Is it something that is going to put her in immediate danger?” Because he wouldn’t risk her.

“No.” Bucky said slowly, shaking his head. “I don’t believe so.”

“Okay…is it something that’s going to hurt her? Because you and I have had this discussion before.” In Venice, when Steve hadn’t wanted to tell her about the corpses and the experiments. Even then, they had no idea how tip of the iceberg it had been.

“I don’t think it will matter who tells her, it’s going to hurt her,” the other man said, stubbing out his cigarette. “But I also don’t have it verified, and telling her something that may not be true could hurt more.”

He was putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “You remembered something that could hurt her, but you don’t want to tell her until you know if you can trust the memory.”

A single nod.

“It’s bad?”

Another slow nod.

“How bad?”

Meeting his gaze, Barnes said, “Life altering.”

Clint leaned back and considered him. “For her or for you?” Though he’d already made some guesses on that answer.

“For both of us.” Which matched what he thought.

“Okay…what do you need to verify it?”

A slow blink of surprise, then Barnes said. “I’m already working on it—you’re not going to ask me what it is?”

“Do you want to tell me?” Because depending on what it was, he might not want to keep it a secret from Nat. The honesty between them might be brutal, but it existed for a reason.

“I don’t know.” That was at least an honest answer. “Natalia… Natalia doesn’t know I’ve remembered.”

“She knows some of it.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know I’ve remembered all of it.” Well there was a confession he didn’t want to hear.

“You don’t want her to know yet…”

He shook his head.

“Why?” Because there was danger in the man remembering things about her she didn’t even know about herself. Danger suggested by his desire to keep it a secret.

“Because if she asks me, I’ll end up telling her. I need to know I’m right before I do…”

This was not a good place to be. “Does Steve know?”

Barnes hesitated, then he nodded.

“And he’s okay with it?” Cap might be skewed where Barnes was concerned, but he’d seemed to change tone in recent weeks.

“No, but he’s willing to give me time before asking me to explain.”

That offered some comfort. “Fine. Here’s what I’ll offer—you don’t get to hurt yourself which is what you were doing in the gym.” At the other man’s skeptical look, Clint nodded to his bloodied knuckles. “You were hurting yourself. That anger—it can be a powerful thing or it can be a poison. You keep turning it inward, and you’re going to hurt more than just you. I’ll help you as much as I can, even if you need to just have someone listen without saying a word. I’ll be a vault.”

“Even from Natalia?”

Fuck, he might live to regret this. “As long as you are planning on being honest with her sooner rather than later— _yes._ However, if I deem whatever it is a clear and _present_ danger to her, then we will read her in then and there.”

It was the best he could offer.

“Twenty four hours,” was Barnes’ response. “If I can’t figure out the answer by then, I’ll ask for your help.”

“And in the meanwhile?” Clint pointed to his hand.

Barnes shrugged, “In the meanwhile, I’ll clean this up after I have another smoke.”

“I think I know why Nat likes you,” he said with a sigh and leaned back.

“Yeah?” Barnes eyed him as he lit another cigarette.

“You’re almost as stubborn as she is.”

For the first time that day, a flicker of a smile crossed Barnes’ face. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Clint protested, but Barnes chuckled.

“That wasn’t why I said thank you...”

Yeah, he figured. “For what it’s worth—you’re welcome.”

He just hoped none of them regretted it.


	35. Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Nat tackle the "simple" art job

**Chapter Thirty-Five**

**Ransom**

**Natasha**

 

 

 

Twenty-four hours after their date, she and Steve were in position at a yogurt shop in Toronto’s underground mall. Steve’s reaction had been worth the trip alone. While he wasn’t a fan of malls, per se, turned out that miles of underground pathways, shops, and a semi-city beneath the windy cold and snow definitely appealed. They each ordered something small, the point of the location was it wasn’t far from a parking garage where she and Steve would meet the art thieves for the first leg of their thief uber ride to check on the paintings.

The fact a couple of feet of snow already blanketed the city, and it had been snowing on and off since mid-October in no way added to the joy of this particular visit. She’d dressed warm, choosing to look the part of the dilettante European negotiator, with her long-sleeved, body clinging dark blue dress, faux fur coat, and hat, paired with knee high boots and black gloves.

She’d dressed Steve in blue suit, shirt, tie, and a pair of glasses. Captain America would always look like Captain America, except today his normally golden blond hair had been darkened with a light brown rinse, that she’d also added to his beard. Dark hair did all kinds of things to his looks, and they definitely made his blue eyes even prettier. The dark rimmed glasses gave him a more academic air while the oversized black coat suggested he was smaller in the shoulders and arms than he was. Optical illusions were part of her stock in trade. As her personal appraiser, his task would be to verify the art they were shown did in fact match the manifest provided by the museum.

The thieves had objected to there being two of them, but she’d been very clear. They didn’t get the money if she wasn’t there, and they wouldn’t get her or the money if she couldn’t authenticate the art, thus—Jacques Dernier, the expert at her side currently, needed to be present.

Thankfully, Steve did a good French accent, even if he managed to sound bored and entertained in the same breath. She hadn’t asked him how he pulled that off, largely because the mystery of it was all too delicious. They’d flown to Toronto at lunch time, checked the private apartment Isaiah had arranged for her care of the museum, then promptly moved into a different one—an old bolt hole of Phil’s, that she and Clint had used from time to time. No one had ever sold it. Fortunately, that particular apartment was housed in one of the buildings that had PATH access, so arriving at their predetermined meeting required only a gentle walk rather than a drive through the snow.

With a glance at his watch, Steve murmured in French, “Five more minutes. Do we show up directly on time or early?”

This was one of those questions that was never simple to answer. You could show up on time, promptness didn’t allow them to get the jump on their targets, while their targets had plenty of time to set up a trap. Conversely, moving too soon could scare the targets off and waste their time.

Everything about this heist said professional. These weren’t amateurs who managed to scam a museum out of a few of their highest valued pieces. They’d gotten into and out of the museum without being caught on camera, and taken very specific pieces all of which would earn a considerable amount in black market sales. Rather than tear up the collection, though, they’d offered to ransom it back to the museum.

This had grown popular in the mid-90s when electronic tracking began to play hell on those seeking to procure or sell their ill-gotten gains. There were trackers in the frames of those paintings, that they hadn’t been activated so far suggested they were either in lead-lined containers or they’d been hidden on property at the museum.

She truly leaned toward the latter.

“Prompt,” she decided. The thieves had nothing to gain in trying to ambush them. They didn’t have the physical cash on them. The whole of the transaction would take place via bitcoin. A strategically untraceable currency available to conversion in most of the world’s markets.

It also meant they couldn’t dye pack the money or set a tracker on it. Arguably, if the deal went off. They could walk away with the art this evening, leaving she and Steve with another thirty-six hours in Toronto all to themselves. No emergencies, no interruptions and just time for them.

Definitely tempting.

They disposed of their yogurt cups and made their way toward the parking garage. Steve kept getting the doors, and acting more like an escort than a man on a mission. A flash of pride flared through her.

This was hardly running from Hydra or ducking German special forces or even Ross’ bounty hunters, but still—he wasn’t slacking at all despite the twinkle in his eye.

The interior of the garage offered the echo of vehicles moving on other levels, the rumble of engines, and the faint squeal of a tire. It was precisely six p.m. when they stepped through the door and a limousine pulled up in front of them.

That was new.

The driver didn’t get out, but the window to the backseat rolled down, and a voice said, “The weather is not often this cold.”

“But that’s why we all enjoy the vagaries of art—it warms us no matter the time of year.” The fact they even used catch phrases entertained her. It was so old school.

“Ms. Renner,” the man’s voice said. “And Mr. Dernier.”

Steve inclined his head rather than say anything. He stood just behind her right shoulder, angled to keep watch on that side of the garage while she focused on the car. Old habits served them well.

“Please,” the man said, and though his accent was almost non-existent, it didn't sound natural. More of affectation. “Get in, and we will move ahead to the art appraisal. You do not have to disable your electronic devices, the interior of the car acts as a Faraday cage, and you will leave all your devices in the vehicle when we reach our destination. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Nicolette Renner responded, she had no objections to the astringent safeguards the thieves had put into place. Her only goal was to return the art to the museum. That meant her cooperation was more of a benefit to her mission rather than a hindrance. She switched to French to ask, “Shall we, Jacques?”

“Of course,” he responded, in French and only in French. They didn’t know how much of the language the thieves spoke, yet it allowed them to remain in character.

He opened the door and she swept the interior with a glance before sliding inside. This was the tricky part of any mission, trusting their safety to the goodwill of their anonymous hosts. He settled beside her, and the window darkened to blackout as it rolled closed after he shut the door. The privacy barrier was up between the front and the back. The car had to be sound proofed, as well, because she couldn’t hear anything outside the vehicle as they began moving—not even the engine.

Deaf and blind in the back of a very expensive car. They’d gone to a bit of trouble to accommodate their authentication process. Of course, the amount they were asking for was likely well worth the small price of this investment. Jacques slid a hand to her thigh, and she eyed him. The twinkle in his eyes deepened as did the curve of his lips. Settling her gloved hand atop his, she tapped out a simple, all okay?

He gave her thigh a gentle squeeze. So maybe she wasn’t the only one having fun on this mission. Truthfully, it was something of a palate cleanser after the kidnappers, mad scientists, bounty hunters, and human traffickers. The only thing that would make all of it better was if James were with them, but he’d been in a world of his own when they’d left.

Even when she pinned him down to talk to her, he promised he was talking to someone and that when he could, he would tell her everything. But first, he had to sort it out in his head. The fact she’d been in the same place more than once had her backing off to give him his space. At least he hadn’t retreated from either she or Steve when they came back from their date. He’d had hot cocoa with them, settled on the sofa and she’d curled up between them, her head on James’ thigh and her feet in Steve’s lap. It had been—nice.

It was Jacques’ turn to tap out an, okay? against her leg and she gave him a small smile. Yes, she was good. Worried about James, and missing him, but—they could do this. It had been a long time since it was just her and Steve on a mission anyway—maybe not as long as she and James, but admittedly, she’d been working with Steve pretty consistently for the last few years.

The drive took roughly twenty minutes with no interaction from their invisible host. With nowhere to look, she had to settle for studying Steve or staring off into space. He made no bones about the fact he looked at her, and if she’d told him he was playing the part of a besotted French romantic, he couldn’t have nailed the role closer. As it was, the playfulness let her be coy and flirtatious.

It was all kinds of intoxicating and she was supposed to be concentrating on any clues to their route, but their hosts had done almost too good a job. It was—unnerving. If anyone else were seated next to her, she might be a little more concerned. But if she wanted out of this car, Cap would get them out of it.

They’d taken exactly five turns. Two lefts, a right, then another two lefts. The distance between turns said they couldn’t keep them in the parking garage and just drive them in circles. The changing texture of the roads told her they’d moved elsewhere in the city, and maybe even over a bridge. It would be easier to tell if she could go by more than the feeling beneath them.

“Thank you for your patience,” the male voice said as the vehicle came to a halt. Jacques stroked his thumb against her thigh, the fabric of the dress adding a silkiness to the movement. “As a reminder, all electronic devices should remain inside the vehicle, as a show of good faith, we are not going to search you. You will, however, understand that in the event you are double-crossing us, we will have to take certain measures. Just because we don’t want to kill you, doesn’t mean we won’t.”

“Very reasonable,” Nicolette responded. “We simply must verify the paintings are in order and match their provenance. You understand.”

Jacques pulled a pair of disposable medical gloves from his pocket. She’d wiped his prints off with her gloves on the way in the car, but they were going to be handling more in that room. No need to offer more than they’d already given by sitting in the car in the first place.

“I do indeed.” The doors unlocked, and Nicolette left her purse on the seat—all that was inside it were items she could afford to lose. Her cover was quite stern, and her bracelet was firmly around her wrist but her dog tags were secured back at the safe house. While yes, they could compromise her cover; she was far more concerned about losing them.

Thankfully, Steve hadn’t seemed to mind.

Jacques waited for her nod then he opened the door, then he stepped out first and he paused a full two heartbeats before extending his hand to help her from the vehicle. The air outside was chilly, but not damp. They were inside a warehouse of some kind, no distinguishing features betrayed their location. The low humidity was boded well for the art.

Unsurprisingly, they were alone in the warehouse. She resisted the urge to glance behind her at the car.

“Ms. Renner, Mr. Dernier, if you will proceed to the red door, you will find everything you need to authenticate the work. You will have forty-five minutes. You may use less, but no more. At that time, you will return to the vehicle and the paintings will remain where they are, and we can begin our actual negotiations.”

Jacques raised his eyebrow, and she gave him a careless little shrug and adjusted her faux fur jacket before striding forward. Her boots clicked across the cement floor, and Jacques had to speed up his strides to catch her.

He was doing so well. At the door, Jacques opened it and glanced inside with a hint of nervousness that just left Nat with the fondest feeling. She’d described this to him when they’d been getting ready, offering him a little bit of a backstory. Yet, he’d insisted he knew how he was going to do this and when he clapped his hands together and gave a little bounce to his step as he entered what appeared to be a rather rectangular room with a single table, overhead lamp, microscope, infrared light, scraping tools, and a magnifying glass, she almost blew everything by laughing.

When this was done, she had to know where he’d come up with this from. He’d never been a natural at subterfuge, and the fact he seemed to be pulling this off with aplomb delighted her to no end.

She closed the door and made a slow walking survey of the paintings resting on tripods. The room was the perfect temperature, not too hot, not too cold, there were no hot lamps on the paintings, and the humidity was perfect. So their thieves were clever, experts, and meticulous. Oh, how she looked forward to solving this little game.

“Do what you need to do Jacques,” she said with an airy wave, moving from painting to painting. A Monet, a Manet, Pissaro, Renoir, the Mary Cassatt surprised her. The thieves, it seemed, had clung to a certain section of impressionistic works. The Calliebotte and Bazille she recognized from her last trip to the museum. They’d hung in the Red Gallery—the whole place creeped her out, wood floors, red walls, and a crown molding that looked too much like a gold ballet barre. It reminded her of too many old wounds.

No thank you.

At the end of the room was a very familiar Degas, however, and she frowned.

 _The Dance Class_ had been taken once before, and she’d recovered it.

Benedict Hagen—he’d been the last thief to steal the Degas, and he was a lover of all things impressionistic, but even more—he had a thing for paintings of dancers.  Who was she kidding, he had expensive taste in art and jewels. When she’d tracked down the Degas before, it was after he’d sold it to a private collector. The same collector had in turn tried to pawn off some forged Degas to the same museum. She’d merely stolen it back, but Hagen had gone into the wind only to crop up somewhere in Eastern Europe for a time, when another painting, _Naked Dancers_ by Pollaiolo had gone missing.

It never appeared on the black market.

Would Hagen be so bold as to take _The Dance Class_ twice?

“They’re not all here,” she said after doing a mental count.

Jacques glanced up from the Monet he examined. Steve wasn’t an art expert, but he knew enough to make it look good and they just needed to examine the borders. Which he was in the process of doing. Forgers didn’t always remove the paintings from their frames, which meant they couldn’t see the borders. The museum had no problem with replacing the frames themselves.

Between her memory and Steve’s, they hadn’t needed to bring anything for comparison. Shifting her stance, she re-counted all the paintings in the room.

Nine.

Ten had been stolen.

Reviewing the mental list, she blew out a breath. It was another Degas— _After the Bath_ that wasn’t present.

“The Monet is the real thing,” Jacques said French. He checked the frame carefully, and gave her a little nod when he found the tracker. They were slid in between the grains of wood. Only someone with intimate knowledge of the latest security measures would know about the nearly hair thin tracking devices—they were little more than fibrous strands, but they worked beautifully.

Except when locked away in a Faraday cage as this room likely was.

Tapping a finger to her lower lip, she tapped out _we’re being watched._ She repeated it twice until Jacques nodded. Whoever watched them had to be local, electronic seals on the place meant it couldn't transmit the video. That was good. He alternated which painting he chose next. They had to check them all, but varying the pattern while she continued to move meant a greater chance of confusing their watchers. Still…she made a show of studying each painting while also scanning the room for their cameras.

She found three of them.

Again meticulous care, she shifted one of the paintings, lifting it as though to peer at it, then placed it back to obstruct the first camera. The second merely required she remove her jacket and hang it up as if she were warm. That left the third and final camera which she left alone.

When Jacques got to the Degas, she tipped her head to the side. He found the tracker, and then he removed it from the frame carefully. Her gaze kept riveting to the movements in the painting. The instructor standing in the middle, she could almost hear the slam of the cane to the floor, ordering them to stop and pay attention.

The chances the same painting would be stolen twice in the course of a few years were remarkably low. That Degas was here for a reason—but why precisely?

The Degas was last, so Jacques returned it carefully to the stand and nodded to her as he replaced each of the items he’d used. He didn’t remove his gloves however, studying her as if he waited for her signal.

“You are missing a painting,” she informed the camera then retrieved her jacket before heading to the door, Jacques was a half step behind her, and she didn’t pull on the jacket. Preferring to have her hands in the lining if she needed to flip it front of them for the bulletproof lining.

One could never be too paranoid.

Outside the room, she paused and she felt more than saw the shift of Jacques to plant himself more squarely at her back, but angled so her arms were free and he could move if he had to.

A man leaned against the side of the limo. Dressed in a Tom Ford suit, the fifty-ish year old Caucasian male stood at around 5’10, with light brown hair, faintly receding hairline, clean-shaven, and brown eyes.

“Good evening,” the man said, straightening as they stepped out and his smile was equal parts open and smug. “ _After the Bath_ is in the boot,” he stated, motioning to the limo. The flat accent he'd used in the car was noticeably absent. “I wanted to see if you could pass the test, and you did so swimmingly.”

“Indeed,” she replied, editing any snarkier remarks because Nicolette Renner had only one goal. 

He let out a little laugh, and shook his head. “It really is remarkable how you do that…and yes, I know, we’re supposed to negotiate fees and we’ll get to that. But I had to know if it would be you who came—the runaround the museum gave over the last week and the hardball you played, I thought it might be. I took the other Degas just for you—did you recognize it?”

“Mr. Hagen,” Nicolette said slowly, almost coquettishly. “Did you really steal over a hundred million dollars worth of impressionist paintings to get my attention?”

Jacques’ posture shifted and she didn’t have to look to know Steve Rogers was the one watching her back as the French art authenticator faded back to wherever Steve had dug him up from.

“No, Ms. Romanoff, I stole one painting to get your attention. The painting you stole back—what, four years ago? Or was it five?” Hagen took a step in their direction, his eyebrows raised.

“It was two years ago,” she corrected, more curious about where he was going with this than she cared to admit. “And I only stole it back when your buyer tried to donate a few _lost_ Degas to the museum.” The collector had gotten cocky with his forgeries, one was the _The Dance Class_ , the painting Hagen had stolen in the first place.

“Well—just having money doesn’t make people smart.” Hagen said, he rubbed his fingers together. “Money just makes people greedy.”

“Since you were ransoming the artwork for fifty million, I think it’s safe to say that it’s made you a little greedy.”

“It’s less than half their value,” Hagen said with a shrug. “And I don’t really need the money—oh I’ll take it, because it can do some good, but I don’t need it.” His attention flicked to Steve behind her. “Does Frenchy there speak English or is he just your pretty boy authenticator and muscle?”

Nat resisted the urge to smirk, and kept her expression bland. “He’s no concern of yours, Hagen. You wanted my attention—you have it.” They were still in a warehouse somewhere in Toronto. She had a pair of knives in sheaths attached to her thighs, a third one in her right boot, a garrote in in the bracelet on her right wrist, and a pair of stingers in the pocket of her jacket.

He glanced at Steve again, then said, “I want a meeting with you—one on one, no Frenchy.”

“Well, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. You arranged this little _tête-à-tête,_ however you can have the conversation now or we can arrange for payment and be done with this altogether and you don’t get a conversation at all.” Seriously what could Hagen want with her? It was an unusual play, then again maybe he was as curious about her as she had been about him.

“Now you see, that’s not very nice,” he chastised her. “I’m being quite polite with you, and I went to a lot of trouble to arrange this meeting. The least you could do is be polite.”

Men.

Sometimes.

“You’re still breathing.”

“And?” Hagen scoffed.

“That’s as polite as I get with arrogant little pricks who want to dictate terms to me.” She smiled slowly, and he flinched.

The smug expression vanished. “I see your point.” Another flick of a look to Steve, then back to her. “I need your help.”

“I’m listening.” She made a show of glancing at her watch. “You have five minutes, and a four minutes and fifty nine seconds, we’re leaving with the car and the art whether you’ve managed to say anything at all.” Because she wasn’t buying he trusted the museum to call her in on this, not with her current reputation and fugitive status. So he was winging this crap, and thinking he could play her.

Fine, she’d listen, but that didn’t mean she was joining his game.

Hagen made a face, he kept glaring at Steve, then her. Back and forth until she said, “Tick tock, Hagen. What did you need?”

“Fine,” he unbuttoned his suit and reached a hand inside it, and she had a knife in her hands and at his throat and Steve had him flat against the car with one hand on his chest. “Woah…” Hagen’s eyes blew wide. “Not a weapon—getting out my phone.”

She glanced at Steve and he nodded, so she slid the knife away then reached in and removed Hagen’s phone. Next she patted his pockets, then his sides and down his legs. When she checked the inside too, he smirked.

“You know if you wanted to cop a fee—” The words choked off as he bounced a little hard against the side of the car. “Easy Frenchy—you can’t blame a guy for trying, she’s hot.”

Steve didn’t look impressed.

“He’s unarmed.” She didn’t use the word clean, it wouldn’t apply. Instead she flipped his phone over and pressed the screen. It had facial recognition software, it was one of Tony’s latest models, not available everywhere. She turned the phone to face Hagen to unlock it and he scowled. Then she raised a brow, and said, “I have the phone, what did you need it for?”

“Go to photos.”

She flipped to the app, and then opened it by date.

“Two weeks ago.”

The time stamp was easy enough.

“I was hired by a man to lift some items from a secure location,” Hagen spoke, as if explaining he had the latest and greatest in vacuum technology that he could demonstrate in your home. Ugh. Door to door salesmen, the memory took her back. She'd actually used that to gain access to a mark's home before. Too easy. “Independent contractor, you know how that goes.”

The images were for some remote Roxxon facility? No, maybe not. But those were Roxxon logos on the wall. Maybe an abandoned one?

“So imagine my surprise when the address I’m given is for some researcher at an energy corporation. What do I know about energy? I know art—I know quality.” He motioned to her. “You—you’re quality.”

Steve just glared at him. It was almost entertaining. He had the shut the hell up look down beautifully.

She didn’t recognize the man in the photos, nor the actual facility. She checked the meta data to see where it was taken. Qaanaaq, Greenland. She flipped to the next image. The man entering what look like a low series of row houses. Then another screen, and it was a look inside the ramshackle building’s window, and what was inside, just past the curtain didn’t match the exterior.

“Turns out, they’ve got some kind of—science thing up there. But they sent me to steal something—dangerous, I think.” The next image was a containment pod and it was the CQ, A or D she wasn’t sure. “So, I get inside, security’s not so slick. Hardest part of the whole gig is getting up to Greenland. Colder than a penguin’s asshole up there. The researcher, he’s off having a pint down at the pub—they actually have one there, a one room shithole but the drink is fine. I left him after I’d bought him a couple of rounds. There’s not another bloody soul inside this place, and I’m thinking why would someone hire me—a world-class thief—to do this? It’s not making much sense.”

No, it wasn’t.

“Your time is almost up,” Steve told him. “So less embellishing and more getting to the point.”

The images of the lab were definitely a researcher’s place, but he was right the security was minimal and the storage for the CQ was bare bones. It was in a containment unit in a cold freezer.

She flicked to the next image and frowned, then blew it up. Those were notes—formula notes. The next had a close up of more pages. The inspired little thief had photographed everything on the desk.

“You’re seeing what I found there—it’s something right?”

“Possibly,” she was going to have to send all of this to her own phone. Tony needed to see these formulas. He might be able to tell what they were for.

“Fine, so I dabble a little, take my snaps, and then I get the container out of the cold room and hot foot it out there. It’s not like I have to run, like I said, the man’s down at the pub. Even if he made it back, he wouldn’t see me. Now again, it’s cold as a penguin’s twat…”

Really, just when she didn’t think he could be more … she couldn't say repulsive, but whatever he was it was extremely unattractive and he kept proving her wrong. 

“…and I’m out, I’ve got the container of the magic goo, and my snaps. I figure if someone wanted to hire me to grab the stuff, someone else might pay for the research.” Hagen looked at Steve. “It’s just simple economics.”

Steve glanced at her, and Nat exhaled slowly. “You got the container, then what?”

“I head on down to where I can get a boat, and get the hell out of there. Move down a click or five and catch a flight. Sooner I get back to Canada the sooner I can make delivery and be paid…”

“Except?”

Hagen winced. “Well this is where it all went sideways…the researcher’s place—it blew up. I saw it from the boat. Then I get back and there’s mention in the papers about that researcher turning up dead—only they list his death as something that happened while he was on hiking vacation to some glaciers—trust me when I say he wasn’t. So now I’m feeling less than enthusiastic about the guys who hired me…and I work double blind, so I’m not sure about them and I make damn sure they don’t know about me…”

Ice slithered up her spine. “Where is the goo?”

“Well, seeing as I didn’t fancy ending up dying on some hiking trip I’d never take or blowing up, I stuck it in the freezer behind the ice cream and started making retirement arrangements…”

That explained the museum. “And you think I can help…”

“You’re the damn Black Widow, I know you can help me.”

She glanced at the images on the phone then at him. “If I hadn’t been the negotiator they sent?”

“Well, I’d be fifty million richer and on my way to Fiji. I can live quite well in Fiji or maybe Costa Rica—somewhere warm. The goo could stay in my damn fridge, I should’ve walked away from the job as soon as I found out it was in Greenland.”

They hired him to go to Greenland to retrieve one of the CQ components. “Don’t suppose this stuff ever moved did it?”

His eyes widened. “It _moves_?”

CQ-D. Okay that was slightly better than CQ-A. Unless frozen it didn't move at all. She really didn't want to concentrate on that too much. She tabbed through his phone, located his GPS and checked his most frequently visited locations. “Let’s take the art out of the trunk and put Mr. Hagen in it.”

“Hey…” He struggled as Steve gave her a questioning look, even if Hagen wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m being square with you.”

“Are you? You stole highly classified material from someone—who perhaps stole it themselves, and then got killed for the trouble. At best you’re an accessory after the fact, at worst—you’re a terrorist.”

“I’m not a bloody terrorist, you crazy bitch.”

Steve fisted his jacket and slammed him back against the car once.

“Eh,” Nat shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”

“I’ve told you everything…”

“No,” she said, flipping the phone around to show him the Roxxon offices in Toronto address, and the next one—Fort Drum—in New York, and a second base—somewhere in Alaska. Fort Greely she'd bet. “You went to these places enough that your phone says you’re fond of them. Now what were you lying?”

Hagen’s expression fell. “They’re crazy bastards and I want nothing to do with them.”

“With who?”

“Some shady government types—you know men in black. They nicked me on a job in Europe, and I’ve been their bitch for a while.” There was a mutinous look on his face.

“This stuff wasn’t the last straw,” Steve said. “It was Fort Greely in Alaska.”

Hagen blanched. “You have no idea what these people are doing…I want out. I wasn’t lying about the art, that—that was my payday. I’ve been on the string with them so long, my coffers are bare. I needed a quick fix…”

“And that’s why negotiations took so long, you’re having to lie low because they’re looking for you.”

“More or less—this is the last of my safe houses, and I’ve got it pretty reinforced.”

“Where’s the CQ-D?”

Hagen pointed to another door. “In there, in a freezer…didn’t think it smart not to keep it cold even if I don’t know what it is.”

They had the art that needed to get back to the museum, the CQ-D they needed to transport to Tony, and Hagen’s phone that had all the information on it needed to go to Tony and as for Hagen…

She looked at Steve and raised her eyebrows. What did he want to do?

“We can’t just let him go,” Steve said softly.

“I’m not SHIELD anymore—there isn’t a SHIELD at all. For all we know he’s tied up with someone in the U.S. military, that leaves out turning him over to the U.S. government, as far as I can tell—he hasn’t committed a reported crime in Canada that we know of, so they aren’t going to arrest him.”

Hagen nodded, then grinned again. “I’m squeaky clean—” At Nat’s look, he shrugged. “Thieving isn’t killing, so I’m a hell of a lot cleaner than you.”

This time when Steve knocked him against the car, his head bounced lightly against it and then he collapsed into unconsciousness.

“Well that was a little rough,” she said.

“I really don’t like him.” Steve muttered, then moved around the vehicle to grab the keys from the ignition. Hagen made all the arrangements himself. He’d picked them up, brought them here—it was all so civilized and impressive. He tossed the keys to her and she ticked through the different keys on the keyring.

“I’m going to check on the CQ-D, we need to know if it’s even secure enough to transport.”

“I’ll call Tony,” Steve said, and she hesitated and he raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“I don’t know—“ She glanced around “Just—be careful. Something about this feels really off.”

And it had from the beginning. Too easy. Even getting Hagen to confess. Course, the guy was a premiere thief, but he’d been in over his head, so he wanted out. Then he _lucks_ upon her being here and he has material the Avengers have been investigating.

It…

“Watch your back,” Steve ordered. “And come right back here, you got it?”

She smiled. “Always.” She turned Hagen’s phone off and slid it into her boot. She’d added her own facial recognition to it so she could unlock it later, for now, with it off. No one could access it once they left this glorified Faraday cage. She strode for the door Hagen indicated. “Steve…you have to go outside to make the call—Faraday Cage.” She motioned to the building. “Be careful.”

His expression told her she was preaching to the choir, but she shook her head and kept moving. It took her two tries to find the key to the next door and unlike the presentation of the art, this opened into a grungy little apartment, right down to the single bed in the corner, a bare wooden table, electric kettle, hot plate, and a derelict looking fridge right out of the 50s.

The hateful little room reminded her of too many places back in Russia, She opened the fridge and found nothing but a single bag of milk in a pitcher, and a couple of tins of fish. Opening the freezer, she spotted the containment unit right behind the ice cream. Even with gloves on, she was loathe to touch that thing.

Images of white blood cells replicating too swiftly and blood boiling were not fun the first time, much less on repeat. Moving the ice cream aside, she studied the containment unit. There were green lights on the bottom. Green usually meant good. Despite being in the freezer, it had been kept in a secure container. They didn’t have time for her to indulge unease, so she grasped the unit and pulled it out. The underside listed several numbers, and a clock showing local time—she’d guess for Greenland. But all green lights, so the unit was intact.

After setting it back in the freezer, she took the place apart looking for some kind of cooler. Hagen had to get it from Greenland to here somehow, and she didn’t think he would have wanted it out in the open.

Wait…

She frowned.

Greenland was two weeks before.

Ft. Greely was a week prior.

He wasn’t on the run two weeks before so why hide the material here unless…

The phone had formulas, longitude and latitude, charts…whoever the researcher was, he knew what Roxxon was up to, and he’d stolen material from them. Roxxon was working with at least one general—only he was U.S. Air Force, not Army. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t meet at Ft. Drum or there weren’t others involved…or they were setting Drum up to be another Greely.

She looked back at the sludge in the fridge.

This was a bigger and longer game.

The cooler was stuck underneath the cot. She dumped all the ice from the ice trays into the cooler, then slid the containment unit inside and locked it shut. Her nice little art job just turned into a high risk, high stakes security threat. Hagen was very much _not_ on her list of favorite people.

Steve had Hagen sitting next to the limo, hands zip tied behind his back and head down. He was still out. He was also carrying the paintings out of the room and loading them into the trunk with extreme care, each one wrapped in a moving blanket. He paused and eyed the cooler. “Is that it?”

“Yep, did you reach Tony?”

“He’s on his way. He wants us to get out of here, and meet him at one of his places. I thought we could leave the limo and Hagen at the museum, and call it in…”

“The limo yes—Hagen no. He was still lying. He’s had this stuff for two weeks, but Greely was a week ago. So either he was planning to double cross his bosses all along…”

“Which I have no trouble believing.”

“Or he had another plan and he adapted it as soon as I came into play.”

Steve frowned. He shut the trunk, then picked up Hagen and tossed him in the back seat before dragging out her purse and handing it to her. She scooped up her jacket from the ground and wrapped it around the cooler—she didn’t expect bullets to start flying, but she’d really rather not risk anything breeching the containment unit. After tossing Steve the keys, she slid into the passenger seat and stored the cooler at her feet.

He had the engine started and the back doors locked so their passenger stayed put, but before he could press the button to open the rolling door, she reached across to catch his hand.

“Hey…”

“Yeah?”

“Your Dernier?” She grinned. “Impressive, Frenchy. Really impressive. I may make a spy out of you yet.”

He laughed, then kissed her. “That wasn’t being a spy, that was acting. I knew Jacques during the war—great guy. Really good with bombs.”

Nat chuckled, and he hit the button.

“And considering what we’re carrying and where it is, I’d rather get to Tony and turn that thing over.”

“Yeah,” she said, leaning back in the seat and looking warily out at the dark snowy world beyond. They had the art, the sludge, and Hagen—and they’d done it all without firing a shot.

So why did she feel like they were missing something?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delayed posting today. Internet grief!


	36. Decoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Nat drop off the art, deal with Hagen, and get the sludge to Tony. Just another day on the job...

**Chapter Thirty-Six**

**Decoy**

**Natasha**

 

 

They traded the tank like limo with its Faraday cage for an older model Ford Escape. Hagen was awake, and glaring at them from the backseat. She’d double secured him with the seatbelts—the guy didn’t have the use of his ziptied behind his back hands, so it was better to keep him in place and right where she could watch him from the passenger seat. The cooler was still stowed at her feet.

She sent a message to Isaiah and to the museum curator with the position of the paintings (less than one block from the museum) and where she’d hidden the keys (taped inside the wheel well); then she’d sent a second message to Isaiah alone about the possible bleed over from her former job (Avenger) to the current job (art retrieval) before she scrapped the phone entirely.

“GPS says it’s about twenty minutes outside of the city,” Steve said after she disassembled and stripped the phone. She spared a look back at their prisoner, and Hagen’s lips compressed into a hard line. It wasn’t just anger, but pain. Guy probably had a headache. Even if he didn’t, he was one. They couldn’t turn him over without risking his outing her presence with Steve. While she didn’t think he’d recognized Steve yet, once Tony put on an appearance the cat would most definitely be out of the bag.

There was a way to spin it. She’d just have Tony ‘arrest’ her in front of Hagen, and lock her up with him. The cooler at her feet jostled as Steve turned onto a highway leading out of Toronto proper. The darkness gave them more cover, and she trusted Steve’s night vision more than she did the vehicle’s headlights or the GPS’ instructions. They varied their route because she still had questions and the ease of all of it left her with a bad taste in her mouth. 

“You know,” she began conversationally. “The only part in this I don’t get Hagen—how did they keep a master thief on a leash? Disappearing is part of your repertoire, as is travel, and languages and security systems. That should have made escape easy…”

Hagen said nothing, though his gaze flicked towards her once before he turned to look out into the darkness once more.

“It’s not the money…you were far too eager to skip out on the ransom. Which, by the way, really tipped your hand.” She shook her head as if disappointed. Thankfully, the lights from the dashboard didn’t illuminate her face or Steve’s enough to give Hagen something to play off of. “You’re also not a science guy…or military. That squared thumb and faint club to your foot would have disqualified you from service.”

The first was a dig, the latter a guess. Hagen jerked, however, confirming the suspicion—one rooted in rumor more than in fact. Still, useful to know.

“But thieves and assassins have one thing in common, which would explain _almost_ everything…” The dramatic pause was purely for effect, because she hadn’t been able to stop sorting, resorting, and then categorizing his actions and history with their current situation. The too easily apprehended screamed deception, particularly when coupled with his colorful little story meant to make them sympathetic if aggravated with his timed, and seemingly ill thought out come-ons where she was concerned.

From the moment he woke, Hagen had been sullen. No smart remarks, no teasing comments, and no dealing for his freedom. Why should he?

He was right where he wanted to be.

Russian nesting dolls.

How do you catch a Black Widow? Play the long game, and hide the trap within a series of other missions—keep her looking one way while you prepare to sting her in the back…

Or in this case, send an assassin to tag another assassin.

They needed the guy out of the car.

“Take the next exit,” she told Steve in French, and slipped out of her seatbelt and slid between the seats to the back. She needed to unbelt him, and get a door open. Headlights flared behind them.

“We have company,” Steve gritted out.

“Don’t slow down on the exit ramp,” she advised, glancing at the signs they passed. “It’s a loop.”

She braced a foot against the door and wedged one hand to the roof as she slipped out a knife from a thigh sheath. Hagen’s eyes went wide when the skirt went up, then his teeth bared.

“Don’t know what you’re playing at…”

“Shh,” she motioned with the knife. “It’s about to get bumpy and you don’t want me to slip.” They were off the highway and the vehicle threatened to go onto two wheels as Steve swung the wheel. The looping turn at sixty miles per hour might have been reckless, but it definitely cost their pursuers as first one set of headlights bounced, and then overturned followed swiftly by the second skidding off the road and into a snow bank.

On a flat straightaway, Steve accelerated and the hard pull of centrifugal force released them. Nat twisted to get a look at the signs. They were still technically on the outskirts of Toronto. They could bleed back into the city and swap cars or they could gamble their pursuers hadn’t gotten a good look at them.

She weighed one option against the other. Neither were optimal.

They were passing through a sleepy industrial area, most of the buildings were dark and shuttered. Still, more likely there was a chance of external cameras, so she didn’t encourage Steve to stop yet.

“What’s the plan?” They were still sticking with the French, but she didn’t think it mattered.

Testing the theory, she answered, “We need to drop his body somewhere.”

A twitch of Hagen’s nostrils. She almost missed it in the dark, and would have if she weren’t practically on top of the guy.

“You know some day, Mr. Hagen…” she told him in conversational English as she sliced through one seatbelt harness, then the other. Though his hands were still behind his back, she could have slipped the zipties by now, so she would assume he could. The whole point of the exercise had been to decoy them into taking him along. “You and I are going to meet again.”

She looked him in the eye and waited until the recognition of what she promised settled into his bones.

“I want you to remember…that when you see me—you made this choice.”

Steve didn’t apply the brakes, but he had taken his foot off the gas. She didn’t doubt for a second she had a good half of his attention.

“Now be a good boy,” she told Hagen. “And open the door.” She nodded to the door on the passenger side.

He glared and she pressed the knife a little closer, drawing a single line of welling blood. “Bitch,” he said.

“Sticks and stones,” she reminded him, and he finally pulled a hand out from behind him and reached for the latch.

“You know they aren’t going to quit, right?”

“A lot of that going around.” The door was open, flooding the interior with cold air. She eased up on the knife and swung more to rest against the backdoor of the driver’s side and planted both feet against Hagen, sending him skidding right out of the vehicle. He tried to grab the door frame to stay inside, but she twisted and slammed her foot against his hand. The crunch of bone and his choked off howl of pain both faded as he tumbled out and into the snow. Crawling over the seat, she pulled the door closed, then checked behind her even as Steve accelerated.

Hagen might be hurting, but he was already stumbling to his feet. Gliding into the front seat, she checked the cooler. The pursed her lips—“You know the rational thing would be to dump the cooler and just keep the containment unit. There’s a chance it’s got a tracker on it, too though.”

“That would mean you holding onto the containment unit, right?” Steve slanted her a sideways look as he changed the GPS for their actual destination. He’d been using his own phone hidden against his thigh while they used the car’s navigation to throw off Hagen.

“Not my favorite plan,” she admitted.

“If he was a decoy—what if that stuff is too?” It wasn’t a bad assumption except… “Not that we can risk it if it isn’t. They played that one too well.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, scanning the night around them as he made his way via surface streets to another straightaway that would take them back east after their westerly trajectory. “You know—we’re not far from Niagara Falls.”

Steve chuckled. “Not sure we have time for detours.”

“Well not now,” she admitted, pressing a toe against the cooler thoughtfully. “I mean nightmare inducing creepy sludge that turns people into zombies, boils their blood, or could possibly blow them to kingdom come aside—we’re in Canada, and it’s a beautiful frozen tundra of snow and ice and I’ve always wanted to see the Falls.”

“You’ve never been to Niagara?” He sounded surprised.

“Weirdly enough, I haven’t had time over the last few years to do a lot of sightseeing—you’d think I’d have made time for it.” It wasn’t like Niagara was even a long drive from the city, she could have taken a day trip at any point.

“So why didn’t you?” He glanced down at the cooler, and she lifted her feet away and planted her boots on the dashboard. With an amused glance at her feet, he shook his head.

Progress.

He didn’t tell her to put her feet down. Then again, she leaned to look around her legs at the cooler—maybe he disliked the alternative more.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I would see it in movies and think, I really want to go. Even made some half-plans for it…”

“Half-plans?”

“You know, the vague—hey why don’t we take a weekend? Did you hear they have great casinos there? Oh, I know this fantastic karaoke bar!” She voiced each question like she were two people having a conversation. “Clint even threatened to take me up there and toss me into a barrel and see how I liked the drop. Pretty sure he was kidding, because I have no idea how a barrel would survive a fall like that.” Talking about it had always been a little bit fun, but then something would come up… “Anyway, I never went. Could be fun.”

“Then it’s a date,” Steve said.

“Tonight?” She teased.

“Well…I would say yes, but my girlfriend signed us up to do this escape room style evening—only in a car, in another country—with a bomb.” The dry delivery made her laugh even harder than the sentiment.

“Where did you hear about escape rooms?” She had to know.

He gave a little shrug. “I told you, I did a lot of dating research on the internet.”

She bit back a smile. “Have I told you how sweet you are?”

“No, but I’m always open to new experiences.” They were both not looking at the cooler now and the GPS said they were getting closer to Tony’s place and not a single car following them.

Hagen had definitely been low-jacked.

“Well, I think you’re very sweet. I can’t imagine what came up you when searched, where to take my hot redheaded girlfriend for a date…” Tongue firmly in cheek, she grinned at his chuckle.

“To be fair,” Steve pointed out. “I learned my lesson about the Internet a long time ago.”

“To be fair? You got stuck in how many pornadoes before you did?” She really shouldn’t delight in his misfortune. It could have happened to anyone, that it happened to Steve at all had been Rumlow’s fault. The prick had told him BDSM was Natasha’s favorite musical group. The horror on his face when his laptop had been overwhelmed with pop ups when he’d finally called her for help had made getting even with Rumlow a priority for her.

It had taken her a day or more to clean out all the malware, then to install some safety programs for him. The next pornado she was able to clean up remotely. There wasn’t a third one, but she couldn’t be sure if that was because Steve didn’t try Google again or if he had figured out what not to click.

“I thought we were discussing my level of sweetness here, not my inexperience with twenty-first century red light districts on the web.”

Nat cracked up. Red light districts. Now that was a term she hadn’t heard in a long time. “True,” she admitted, wiping the dampness from the corners of her eyes. “You’re very, very sweet.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek before she settled back into her seat. “The sweetest…so should I expect an actual escape room date at some point?”

“No,” Steve told her. “That’s work, not dating.”

She opened her mouth to challenge the thought, then paused. He wasn’t wrong. “Well, I think you’ve done a spectacular job so far.”

“It helps that you’re as inexperienced in this area as I am.” The admission warmed her.

“Does that make me an easy target?”

“Never.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “You’re a challenge, every day of the week and twice on Sundays.”

She grinned, but as they got closer to Tony’s place, she wasn’t the only one stealing looks up to see if they could spot the Iron Man armor. “Am I alone in not wanting to take this thing inside his place if we’re not sure there’s a tracker in it?”

The chances of their being a tracker seemed low. At least no one had come after them.

“No, you’re not.” He checked his phone screen then passed it to her. There was a message on it from Friday.

_Boss says to take the containment unit to the basement and put it in the large freezer there. It’s an old lead lined model and should block any signals until he can go over it. He also booked you a suite at the Niagara Falls Hilton and he’ll have a helicopter pick you up after he arrives._

Nat glanced at her wrist. “Tony—what did I say about activating the bracelet remotely?”

A message flashed on Steve’s phone. _CQ, A or D, beats privacy, Red._

Steve shook his head as he turned onto the long drive. A camera swiveled toward their vehicle, and then the gate opened. Was there anywhere in Tony’s vast network of properties that Friday couldn’t access?

Probably not.

“Well, I guess he has a point—and it’s not like I was going down on you in the car.” She grinned teasingly at him, hoping he’d play along. There was a faint red flush to his cheeks, but he lifted his eyebrows.

“We’re about to be in a house—with beds. There’s still time.” Ha! He got her.

She mimed clapping her hands together, and grinned as he accelerated down the drive.

His phone buzzed. _Now that’s just mean. And here I thought better of Cap. Are you corrupting him?_

“I don’t know Steve, am I corrupting you?”

“Is it really corruption if I’m willing?” He pulled the car into the port between the detached garage and the house, and put it in park. “Asking for a friend.”

His phone buzzed. _Clothing is not optional. Where are your manners?_

Steve leaned across and nuzzled a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then trailed a line of them to her ear, “Do you really want to keep teasing him?” He murmured.

She wanted to keep teasing someone. Running a hand up Steve’s thigh, she brushed her knuckles along the zipper. “I’m feeling a little adventurous—and he might have a voyeurism kink, you never know.”

Resting his forehead to hers, Steve shook with suppressed laughter. The clank of Tony’s sudden arrival in front of the car pulled them apart with a jerk. He pointed a finger at them. “You’re bad,” he said. “Both of you. I should put you in a time out.” The armor slipped off his face as he circled the car to the passenger door.

Steve didn’t lean away, instead he canted his head when she opened the door to let the cold and Tony in. “Do you have a voyeurism kink?”

Despite his incensed expression, Tony’s eyes were dancing. “Going to give me a show if I say yes?”

“As long as that cooler is secure somewhere far away from her, I might even think about it.”

Tony pressed a hand to his chest and the other to her shoulder. “Red—you really have turned him to the dark side.”

“It’s okay,” she patted Tony’s hand. “We have cookies.”

“And hot cocoa.” Steve added.

“Send you two away for a few minutes and you get delusions of sex tape stardom…which…” Tony paused as he gripped the cooler and lifted it as carefully as one might a live grenade. “…I would have to advise against unless you have a secure server—which, of course I do—because premium material of America’s ass falling to Russia’s sway would definitely qualify for five star material on every porn site in the world, and probably some on the dark web, too.”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it with a firm shake of his head before saying, “You know, on that one—I really don’t want to know.”

“Smart man,” she told him, then gave him a kiss before sliding out of the car to follow Tony into the house. Steve was a half step right behind her. The interior was warm, but not overly so and Tony didn’t shed his armor as he made his way to the basement steps and then directly downstairs to the promised freezer.

Once there, he had Friday turn up the lights, and then set the cooler ontop of it. “You two stay right over there,” he ordered when she and Steve hit the last step. Steve planted his hands on her hips and then lifted her up and back, setting her on the step behind him.

“Pushy,” she muttered, but leaned against his shoulder to keep watch.

“Deal with it,” he retorted, undeterred.

“Romance is not dead,” Tony chortled, but his expression didn’t reflect the laughter as he opened the cooler and carefully extracted the containment unit. It hadn’t miraculously changed at any point during the ride. There were still green lights along the bottom, and the field around it hummed. The material inside remained inert. “Baby girl, are you getting any readings off this?”

“Negative, Boss. Just standard power signature of a containment unit.”

“No radiation? No other energy signatures from inside? No transmissions?” The puzzled question said he believed it to be an unexpected result.

“Negative Boss. It’s a null.”

Natasha frowned. “There should be something.”

“Yes, Red…there definitely should be.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Did it react to you like the stuff in the lab?”

Steve’s shoulder tensed beneath her grip. Well so much for omitting that piece of curated knowledge. “No,” she said, keeping it simple, then tightening her grip on Steve’s shoulder. She’d explain later. “It was just what you see when I took it out of the freezer.”

Tony glanced at her, then at her hands. “Gloved then too?”

“Yeah.”

“Lined gloves?” He studied the device then her hands.

“Yes,” she said slowly, then sighed. “My face and head are not inside lined gear…”

“Maybe, indulge me. Take the gloves off.” The invitation wasn’t given lightly. Tony hadn’t been thrilled with the behavior of the material in his lab, and she’d not been back since. If she were to hazard a guess, there wouldn’t be another need to meet in that lab for her until the material was long gone.

“How does it reacting to her affect the containment?” Steve asked in a firm, if steady voice. She was about to strip her gloves, when Steve covered her hand and shook his head.

“The negative effect was negligible beyond a minor power drain.” Tony downplayed that, but then he was probably reading the room the way she was.

“And will it drain this one?” Steve nodded to the device. “We’re not exactly position to contain it again swiftly here.”

“True…” Tony reached over and jerked open the freezer. “All we need to do is lock it in here. Below -10 Celsius, and this stuff goes quite firmly dormant.”

Dormant wasn’t dead.

“Fine. But Nat stays over here and the unit stays over there.” The look Steve sent her killed the argument on the tip of her tongue.

“Agreed,” Tony said.

“I take it I don’t get an opinion?” She verified.

Both men chorused, _no_. Eyes rolling, she raised her hands in surrender. Steve nodded, and then nudged her up one more step before moving lower. “Okay,” he said. “One glove at a time or will it matter?”

She didn’t wait for Tony’s answer before she stripped the gloves off. Tony eyed her, then the material. Nothing. But there was about ten feet between her and containment unit. “I was within four feet when the material in the lab reacted.”

“We don’t need the answer that badly, do we?” Steve verified instead of ordered and she gave him a small, if apologetic smile.

“If it’s going to do anything around me, I think it already would have. It was in the car with us and right at my feet.” More and more she was glad she decided to put her feet on the dash.

“You were gloved and it was sealed in a container…the temperature on this isn’t lower than what we were using in the lab, but this material isn’t liquefied and it’s not responding at all. It may very well be inert and dead—fine. But I’d like to know if that’s the case or if we’re dealing with some other mutation.”

“Not encouraging the confidence here, Tony.” Steve commented, but he glanced at her and raised his eyebrows. As much as he wanted to protect her, he wasn’t dismissing her choice in this.

“Unfortunately Cap,” Tony said. “I don’t have a lot to offer. We have too many questions and not enough answers about this stuff. So—Red, you in?”

“Fine, but I’m hungry so one more test then you put that thing on ice please.” She descended the steps and Steve took point, moving ahead of her. Accepting the validity of her input wasn’t the same as letting her just handle it though.

Five feet from Tony, the material didn’t move.

Four feet, she thought it might have trembled and she stopped. All three of them stared at it.

“Hold there Cap.” Tony set the device down and then he moved to stand between them and it. “All right Red…come into its web said the sludge to the spider…”

Nat groaned. “You do realize I’m the spider in this particular scenario, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that thing isn’t a fly…”

“Agreed.” Three feet. The trembling became visible and the block of material began to shift.

Two feet. And it descended into liquid.

Steve’s indrawn breath pulled her attention and she glanced at him. “It’s still contained.”

“Uh huh,” he said, flexing his hands. He wanted his shield, she could practically taste the desire. Not that she faulted him. She’d prefer to do this in her tact suit, and heavily armed.

Tony was directly in front of the container. “One more step Red…”

She closed the distance; it put her directly behind Tony. Right hand raised as if to wave, she leaned slightly to see around him to the container. The liquid shivered, and instead of lunging toward her, it shimmered and reshaped until it formed a hand that was facing them palm forward.

Helmet retracting away, Tony glanced from it to her then back again. “Cue the _Twilight Zone_ music. Back away Red.”

She retreated to the stairs, and by the time she was on the first step it was a hard, motionless cube once more.

“It’s different,” she said with a sigh.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “The question is—is this the original stuff or what they’ve been trying to do?”

Slipping a hand into her boot, she pulled out Hagen’s phone. “Heads up.” She tossed it and Tony caught it. “Passcode is your birthday—I reprogrammed it after I got it from Hagen. I wouldn’t turn it on until we can jam any signals to and from it, but he’s got a ton of photos of paperwork on there, research, formulas, locations, and maps.”

“Some days, I could just kiss you.” Tony stared at the deactivated phone then the material. He set the containment unit into the freezer, then flipped it closed. “I’m not going to hang out here long, I want his back in a secure lab at the Tower.”

That was a lot of this stuff they were starting to have. Images of Trojan Horses danced in her head. It couldn’t be paranoia when the whole world seemed out to get them.

“How reliable is this Hagen guy?”

Steve shook his head. “Not at all. He either is a chameleon and very adaptable to changing circumstances or he set all of this up to get Nat in the same place as he.”

“I have a hard time believing the latter,” she protested, folding her arms. “Yes, creating a Russian nesting doll plot would theoretically work to try and slip past my radar. But nothing about this guy was all that smooth, if he’d _wanted_ to take me, we were locked in the back of that limo Steve, a little gas and you and I are out. Even with our metabolisms, and the fact we can hold our breath for a while, all he needed was six minutes.” Then again, maybe he didn’t trust the car to hold them for that long.

“I could have gotten the door off, and if not the door, then at least one of the windows out,” Steve echoed her thought. “But—we were also in the hermetically sealed room with the art. That would have been a better ambush point.”

“Then it was luck of the draw that I was there…”

“Or the point wasn’t to take you out there,” Tony offered helpfully. “Maybe the point was to test their little funion of darkness here or maybe he was just supposed to get you in the open, see who was helping you.”

“Or he wasn’t lying about running from them, and part of the reason he used the Faraday cages is he had an embedded tracker.” She shrugged. “I’ve had to dig them out of me before…”

Steve frowned at her. “The KGB tagged you?”

“No, SHIELD.” She squeezed his arm. “So either he knew he had it and was counting on them showing up for him—or—maybe…it was as simple as hoping I’d take them out for him. There are way too many variables to guess. The art is back at the museum, we have the little funion of darkness, and Hagen might be in the wind, but I’ll find him.” Eventually.

Rubbing his hand up and down her back, Steve said, “I don’t think anything with that material is a coincidence any longer. Someone is experimenting and they’ve lost control of it.”

“Clearly,” Tony said, agreeing. “So that means it’s on us to figure out where all the magical Legos go.”

“And why the react to Nat.” Steve slid his hand to the nape of her neck, the brush of skin on skin a comfort before he said, “Take it out again Tony. I’m assuming the material doesn’t react to you the way it did to Nat.”

“Haven’t tested this one.” But he opened the freezer, set the containment unit on top and then retracted the armor from his hand. He waved it right at the unit. Nothing. “Your turn Capcicle.”

Steve crossed the distance and she gripped the banister, forcing herself to breathe and stay still. He had to deal with her doing this a few minutes earlier. The material trembled—a little—but then it went static again.

“Did I imagine that or did it actually move?” She asked.

“No, you didn’t imagine it. It—nudged a little…” And before Tony could finish, Steve picked up the containment unit. The material trembled again, but didn’t destabilize. “Well,” he said, taking the containment unit from Steve then eyeing her. “Winner, winner, Natasha is chicken dinner.”

She raised a brow, but only shook her head. “Did my blood work turn up anything useful?”

“Not a damn thing except that the stuff reacts to your blood as well as you.” Tony spread his hands. “Not really useful if we’re not sure what in your blood or you is actually causing the reaction.”

Arms folded, she leaned a hip against the railing. “It’s not the serum. Or it would have had more of a reaction to Steve.” Though it _had_ moved some.

“I’ll test it with Barnes when I’m back, see if he triggers any response from it, but you and Steve didn’t have identical serums, so we can’t arbitrarily eliminate the serum as the cause. It just means whatever Erskine did to it before he gave it to Steve—altered it significantly.” Which they kind of already knew… “You said you would get infusions of the serum and had for years, right?”

Not her favorite memories, but she nodded. “Starting when I was eight or nine, and then regularly throughout my teen years. Eventually I went to Arkangelsk and they injected me with the full dose.” A dose that had left her incredibly ill, but she’d survived.

“They repeated it when they wiped you…” Tony grimaced, but he studied her. “The chair in Hell’s basement had bluish liquid in banana bags and IVs ready to be hooked up.”

The flashes from the storage room at Azzano. The chair. James being dragged into it. The bags of blue liquid, and the IVs. Another flash, the IV’s being placed in the backs of her hands. The bags being hung—the doctors around her were talking but she couldn’t quite hear the words.

“Angel?” Steve was suddenly right in front of her and she blinked. Tony was watching her with a worried look and she shook her head.

“I’m fine…sorry. Yeah. They would have IVs of liquid, but I don’t know if it was the same stuff.”

“So they infused you over and over again for years—the question is why and what did it do…and we’ll get to that eventually—not that you want me to study it, and I respect that.” As much as it probably pained him to let any line of inquiry, especially one where he didn’t have all the answers, go, he was absolutely sincere. “Do you remember ever being exposed to radiation? Of any kind?”

She spread her hands. “It’s possible, but—I’ve been to Chernobyl, after the meltdown. I went to render medical aid.” So many people got sick.

“But you don’t trigger Geiger counters.”

A shrug. “I suited up. Why does it matter?”

“When they did Project Rebirth, they exposed your boyfriend there to incredibly high amounts of Vita-Rays.”

Steve nodded. “It was in the chamber, right about the same time they injected the formula.”

“Dad speculated that the Vita Rays mutated the serum when it was injected, that’s why it bonded with your DNA and made it virtually inseparable. Even breaking it down in a lab doesn’t free the serum from your molecules. Maybe that was the point, or maybe Erskine realized he need an X Factor and radiation was all the rage in the 30s and 40s.”

“So my serum isn’t attached to my DNA?”

“It is—but your DNA has abnormalities anyway…it’s very specific and even separating the serum out, it won’t work with someone who doesn’t have your DNA without a lot of manipulation.” Which meant it wouldn’t work with anyone. “Barnes is different again—so you’re looking at three different phases of Erskine’s work, and the results are definitely variable.”

“I don’t recall any exposure to radiation during all the various infusions.”

“Fair.” Tony rubbed his goatee. “I want to do a full spectrographic analysis of you and your blood. We’ll figure it out Red…in the meanwhile; I’ll take this stuff back to the Tower, why don’t you two actually go to Niagara Falls? I was serious about the offer.”

“Our stuff is back at the apartment,” Nat said, and she wasn’t sure going off for the night as appealing as it might be was the right thing considering the latest developments.

“Then go grab it, and drive down or you know…I’ll have a helicopter pick you up in the city. You can treat it like a vacation. Take a couple of days, see the falls, and get a break from the rest of reality.”

It was an odd echo considering she, Steve and James had just been talking about vacations. Except, she’d rather go back to the Tower than to the Falls which was odd because she did want to see them.

“Bucky…” Steve began but Tony held up a hand.

“Before I left, Barnes was locked away with Clint on the shooting range and Clint said something about introducing him to Mario Kart and first person shooters. I think he can handle the babysitting for you two. And seriously—go—you’ve both dealt with enough this week.” Then he eyed the containment unit. “And until I have this fully locked down and idea of why the hell it likes Nat so much, I think I’d rather you weren’t in the Tower.”

Steve glanced at her, and she knew Tony had hooked him with that one line. She glared at Tony and he smiled, aware of exactly what he’d done.

“Done deal?”

 

 

It wasn’t even a full two hours later when Nadja Rasmussen stepped off the helicopter with Jacques Dernier. They’d fudged it a little on the IDs, but Tony booked the penthouse suite for his personal assistant and “companion.” They didn’t even have to descend to the lobby, because they were greeted on the helipad and lead directly to their room. There was already a bottle of wine chilling, and their host promised that dinner would be sent up within the hour. They would not be bothered for their ‘weekend’ away unless they sent for food and he wished them a pleasant stay before accepting his tip and stepping out.

After stripping off the coat followed by her wig and photo static, she walked over to the sliding door and let herself out into the cold. Below the falls were absolutely stunning all lit up with a myriad laser lights—and in a Christmas display. Steve’s grin when he’d seen it had lightened some of the inexplicable sadness drifting through her. Arms folded, she stared down at the cascade of water. This high up, she could only hear them faintly over the hum of the still awake little town perched on the border between Canada and the U.S.

The view—she didn’t really have words for it. It was so beautiful and at the same time, she wanted to cry. Natural wonders were exquisite, and she’d seen a few in her long life, but the profound sense of melancholy was hard to define much less explain.

Behind her the door opened, then closed, and then Steve had his arms around her as she stared down lights on the water. The warmth along her back grounded her, and he rested his chin against her head. “Buck didn’t answer, so I left him a message, and then I sent a text.”

They hadn’t really had a chance to check in with him since they’d left, and with the change in locations they both wanted to make sure he was aware. “Tony said he was playing video games with Clint…” They could be hours.

“As I recall, you vanished into that black hole a few times.” He chuckled. “And God help the poor soul sent to pull you two out.”

“We weren’t that bad,” she protested, but he nuzzled her ear. “Okay…maybe we were a little terrible. Clint is definitely worse than me.”

“Yes, dear.” It was so perfectly perfunctory; she didn’t have to imagine the sarcasm.

“Careful Rogers, I might think you’re looking to start something.”

“You know what Romanoff…” He bit her earlobe gently, and she laughed. The sensuous sensation relaxed and teased her in turns. “I just might want to start something, but first…”

She closed her eyes. “Steve…”

“The bio organic material _reacts_ to you?” He asked, all perfect patience as he held her close, leaving her vividly aware of every hard muscle at her back.

“You’re cheating,” she muttered.

“Am I? I thought you were immune to most interrogation techniques?” This time he glided his tongue along the shell of her ear before kissing the skin just below, the biting ever so lightly. It was just enough to make her want more, and not nearly enough to satisfy the desire.

“Just what internet sites _have_ you been visiting?” She retorted, then groaned when he continued to kiss down the side of her throat.

Mouth occupied, he slid his hands up to just below her breasts, and right when it was about to get interesting, he settled them back against her abdomen and returned to her ear. “Reactive material, Angel?”

“I am suddenly beginning to understand why James calls you a punk.” She felt more than saw his smile.

“And you’re still evading the question, which tells me you know you should have mentioned it but decided against telling me something was up with it. This _after_ you were in a facility where some of it was freed and could have been a real threat to you…” He moved from one ear to the other, tormenting the neglected one this time.

“Fine…” She loosed the word on a moan, and he paused with her earlobe between his teeth. “Yes, it was the afternoon Tony and I spent working on the material I lifted from Roxxon. He has some CQ-D samples in his lab…”

He released the lobe with a little pop, and a shiver went down her spine. “That’s the supposedly dormant one that explodes?”

“Yes.” She laced her fingers with his against her stomach. “He has them in ARC reactor sustained containment units, but when I went past one of them, it all but lunged at the side of the containment like it wanted out—and it caused a bit of a power drain on the unit when it did that.”

“And?” He drew circles with his thumb around her scar. It was the lightest of touches, but it kept her very present in the moment.

“And nothing, it didn’t react to Tony, it reacted to me and we had no idea why. I left him with some blood samples because he wanted to see if there was anything triggering it. It—I didn’t have anything to really tell you other than we had yet another mystery about a substance we know perilously little about.”

“Except that it consumes and then transforms people, which I’ve seen,” he said, his voice tense. “And takes them over. That a variant of it can cause significant explosive force. It’s currently being experimented on and used by one shady corporation—that by the by, had an accident with the same stuff while _you were in the building…_ then after you saved their lives, the scummy little bastard tried to have you killed. Except that, right?”

“Well…when you put it that way.” She winced. “We knew it was bad Steve…”

“Yes but some of us weren’t aware of how much of a threat it could be to _you_ personally, and those of us left in the dark are not thrilled by the omission of intelligence. Did Buck know?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t tell either of you. I honestly—” She twisted, and he loosened his arms to let her turn. Meeting his gaze she spread her hands against his chest. He was still in the blue suit sans the black overcoat, and glasses. His hair was still on the dark rinse in it, that he would wash out with his next shower but there was no mistaking the Steve in his expression or his eyes. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, not when it’s flatly dangerous period.”

“We’re going to agree to disagree on that…Nat, if that stuff reacts to you specifically, it means exposure might be a thousand times worse for you…”

“Worse than being turned into some kind of sludge zombie or having my blood boil before I explode?” She raised her eyebrows.

He frowned, but remained undeterred. “Possibly. You weren’t worried about it? At _all_?”

A little shrug. “In the grand scheme of all the stuff we have to worry about, something weird about the a weird substance we’re already struggling to identify, and find a way to contain or neutralize…that it reacted to me might be of scientific interest, but all it told me was what I already knew. Stay away from it. Steve it’s like worrying a hollow point can kill you even more effectively than a standard bullet—they’re both deadly, why worry about one more than the other?”

Steve sighed, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Angel—”

“I won’t do it again, dorogoi. I promise. You need to know because you need to be able to watch my back and I need to watch yours.” They’d covered this ground, and she hadn’t forgotten his very real fear.

“Thank you.” Eyes closed, he sighed. “This is nice.”

“Successfully interrogating me and then leaving me turned on and unsatisfied?” Because it wasn’t nice for everyone involved. Her nipples ached from the near brush with his hands he’d refused her and she still had tingles racing over her skin where he’d kissed her.

“I meant holding you, the suite, the view—being here.” He gave her the lightest of squeezes before releasing her and backing toward the room. “The rest of it is just a perk.”

She wasn’t sure whether to gape or to applaud. “Who are you and what have you done with my Steve?”

“Right here, Angel. But a good boyfriend knows how to keep up with his girlfriend and let’s just say I’ve had a few years of observation to fall back on.” He opened the door. “I’m going to grab a shower before dinner gets here.”

He winked, a smug little grin gracing his lips as he turned away. What a tease…and he knew. He had to know the frustration. She’d _told_ him…

Then she paused.

Of course he knew, because there was no way he was immune to it.

He glanced at her through the glass door after he grabbed his sweats and a clean shirt from his bag. She waved, and smiled. Oh yes, he knew and he was doing it on purpose.

Fine.

“It’s on, Captain Rogers,” she murmured. “Two can play this game.”


	37. Games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat brings the game to Steve...

**Chapter Thirty-Seven**

**Games**

**Steve**

 

 

The dark hair in the mirror still managed to surprise him, but he grinned as he loosened the tie, before turning on the shower. It wasn’t often that he could turn the tables on Natasha. Maybe it was their _covers_ and the flirting they’d done walking in the mall, and then in the limo. Maybe it was the fact that working with her was as easy as breathing. Every day, he got to see more and more of the real her, not just the roles she adopted and played, but the smart sexy woman beneath who made comically fun dorky references and teased their friends— _“I’m feeling a little adventurous—and he might have a voyeurism kink, you never know.”_

While the water heated, he stripped out of the suit, careful to hang up the jacket and the slacks. It was a nice suit—and the fact it was armor lined and bullet resistant surprised and delighted him. She thought of everything. Of course, it didn’t hurt when her eyes lit up the first time he’d walked out in it. The cut of the suit was tailored to his size, which meant she hadn’t just picked it up off the rack.

The shirt had wrinkled but he still shook it out, then added it to a hanger. His shoes were back in the bedroom and the socks he stripped off, then boxer briefs. His cock bounced against his stomach and he eyed it with a shake of his head. No getting ahead of himself; no matter how hungry he was for her.

He blew out a breath and stepped into the water. When she’d made that off the cuff remark about Tony, Steve had surprised himself by jumping in and following her lead. Tony’s response had been worth it, but it was Nat’s that Steve had enjoyed the most. The taste of her skin lingered on his lips, leaving her on the patio overlooking the falls had been damn difficult. Every time he’d put his lips on her, he’d felt her pulse leap, caught the feeling of her breath sharpening, and the soft grind of her hips pressing back against him had him ready to drag them both inside.

Shifting his thoughts away from how she felt in his arms, or how her scent tickled his nose or the softness of her hair despite being confined in wigs constantly, he washed his hair and then his beard. His balls ached and once he’d washed the rest of him and rinsed the color out of his hair, he pressed one palm against the tile wall and wrapped the other around his cock.

It was hardly his first time jerking off in the shower, and if he planned to keep his hands to himself in their bed tonight, he needed to take the edge off. The first slow stroke of his hand from base to tip sent a very pleasant tingling through his balls and up his spine. Closing his eyes, all he had to do was imagine pressing his lips to her throat as he stroked himself slowly. It took very little to stiffen to the point of painful—he hadn’t lied when he said wanting her wasn’t the problem.

Hell, he half thought he was ready, and she made her interest equally clear. If it were just a physical relationship he was after, he’d probably have invited her into his showers a long time ago. That reality sank in over the last few weeks, after finding her again in Vienna, and after accepting that part of his frustration with her lay hand in hand with the fact he had been falling for her.

The rasp of her voice when she said his name lit him up like a stroke against his skin. When she’d run her knuckles against his zipper, the pressure just enough to tease him through the fabric, he’d nearly groaned right there. The way she’d bite her lower lip when she was concentrating on something pulled at him, or the way she moved when she danced—he’d never get tired of it.

Pushing his cock through the damp cradle of his palm, he wished like hell it was her. The image of her sprawled on his bed, naked and powerful, open and vulnerable, a temptation and revelation in one beautifully strong package and he groaned as his hips jerked and the orgasm fired through him. Fuck, he pressed his head against the tile and panted.

“You know,” she said softly, her voice gliding up his spine. “That dance is a lot more fun with a partner.”

Glancing over his shoulder, he stared in surprise as Nat leaned against the bathroom counter, her attention on the mirror as she washed her face. The washcloth hid her eyes from him, and he had to shudder. How long had she…?

“Sorry,” she said, without an ounce of apology to decrease the smile in her voice. “You were taking a minute, and I didn’t want to startle your moment.”

He laughed, and shook his head. “I see,” he managed and his voice was a lot thicker, and heavier. His body still tingled with the vague aftershocks of pleasure, but his cock twitched with every word she said.

“Are you done?” She asked, and he blinked, a little startled. Hadn’t she just…? “With your shower,” she added and his face flushed hot. So much for having the upper hand. Straightening, he pushed away from the tile and faced her. At least he wasn’t sporting the viciously hard erection, even if his balls tightened when his gaze collided with hers.

She dipped her gaze a fraction, but lifted her brows. Folding her arms accented the sweet lines of her bare shoulders, and belatedly he realized she was wrapped only in a large towel.

“Did you want to shower?” That came out even rougher than his earlier two words.

“I’d like to—but only if you’re done.” The caveat sent a spear of disappointment through him.

“Of course,” he fumbled a little, but left the water on for her. Pushing the door open, he looked for a towel and then Nat stripped hers off and handed it to him. “…thank you.” And he held the towel as his gaze drifted over her. She was every bit as lovely as he remembered. Sketching the curves of her hips, and the swell of her breasts, he couldn’t do her justice.

“You’re welcome.” She eased aside so he could exit, and then she slipped past him and her breasts rubbed against his damp back and Steve bit back a low groan even as his breath escaped him on a shaky exhale.

Back to her, he couldn’t take his gaze off the mirror and watched as she stepped under the spray and tilted her head back. With her arms raised, to push through her hair it was just all naked curves with water running over them, and then his gaze snagged on the chain around her neck. He’d barely registered it a minute ago, and he twisted to face her through the glass.

“See something you like?” She asked, but her eyes were closed. Yes, he definitely saw something he liked. His dog tags were right there hanging between her breasts while she washed her hair and the droplets of water skated over every inch of the flesh he wanted to kiss.

“Yes,” he said, the croak in his voice making him wince. “You do not fight fair, Angel.”

“I told you,” she said, turning to give him her back, and his gaze went obediently down the muscled firmness to the curve of her ass. “I fight to win…but this isn’t fighting, _solntce moya_.”

“No?” Instead of giving her privacy, he toweled off slowly, and kept his gaze on her while filing that endearment away. This was what she’d come in for, he’d left her wanting on the balcony and she was returning the favor.

If this was a battle, he had a feeling he’d enjoy losing it every bit as much as winning.

“Not at all,” she said over her shoulder, her eyes gleaming at him through the steam of the shower. “This is a game.”

“A game,” he repeated slowly, then hooked the towel around his hips before his rapidly returning erection gave him away.

“Hmm-hmm.” She turned away again, her arms were raised as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair. The suds cascading over her were even more provocative than water alone.

“Games usually have rules,” he countered, smiling in spite of it all. There was just something so magnetic about her in this mood. She’d thrown him, caught him red-handed so to speak, and while that might be a little embarrassing, he wasn’t ashamed of how she made him feel or the need she woke up in him. Thankfully, she didn’t seem at all deterred by it either.

“True,” she agreed, adding some conditioner to her hair before she reached for the washcloth he’d just used and soaping it up before turning to face him. As vainly as he tried to keep his gaze on her eyes, he couldn’t stop watching the way she ran the soapy wash cloth—that he’d just run all over him—all over her body, taking her time massaging her breasts, far longer than she likely needed to and every ounce of relief he’d bought himself in the shower, vanished as his blood pounded south.

“Are you going to share what the rules are?” He cleared his throat and dragged his gaze upward as she ran the cloth to her throat. The devilish little smile on her lips told him she hadn’t missed an ounce of his struggle. “It would only be fair.”

“Fair, hmm?” She extended one arm, washing it down then the other before lifting a leg and to rest her foot on the little ledge and she began to wash her leg. His attention drifted to the cradle of her thighs, and the sweet pink lips glistening from the shower—he told himself. It was damp, inviting, and so perfectly sweet looking because she was in the shower.

Baseball stats evaporated before he could even put his finger on one, and he groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “Angel, you’re killing me.”

“Sorry,” she said, with at least a hint of real contrition. “I thought everything was fair…you tease me. I tease you. Eventually one of us will concede…”

He peeked at her from between his fingers. “If I’d asked out on the deck…?”

“Is my answer even a doubt in your mind?” She stepped beneath the spray and rinsed all the soap off.

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not.”

“So—” She shut off the water, and he reached for another of the big fluffy towels to hand to her. When she grasped it, he tugged her forward and bent his head to claim her lips. She caught her balance with a hand against his chest, and while neither of them released the towel, he pressed her close so he could feel her wet breasts against his skin, then sensuous glide of her fingers, as she cupped his nape and then her tongue thrust against his and her breathy little moan lit him up on the inside.

She let go of the towel and ran her hands along his sides as he pressed his tongue against hers, and she let him in. While she didn’t loosen his towel, she pressed her hips up to his and Steve finally slid his hands down to her hips and he lifted her, swinging her around to sit her on the counter and bring her head level with his. A little hiss of surprise escaped her at the cold marble, and he raised his head to meet her hooded gaze. Then he dipped his attention to trace the droplet of water that fell from her head to skate down along her chest, next to the chain of his dog tag before it followed the curve of her breast to come to a rest against her nipple.

The deep rosy flesh had pebbled, stiffening tight, and his mouth watered. His palms itched to touch her, and as he trailed his fingers up her side, he grew aware of her gaze and then she caught his fingers and he held his breath. When she settled his hand against her breast, he let it out with a half-laugh and she grinned.

“I won’t break,” she promised. “You want to take your time—I can respect that. You want to establish some rules…we can do that too.” With careful pressure, she guided his hand to squeeze her breast and then release it. Aware of his own strength, he traced his fingertips to the nipple and then squeezed it. Her little gasp of breath had him zeroing his attention on her eyes as he repeated the move.

“Too much?” He asked, because he wanted to do more.

“No,” she said, with a smile and leaned into his hand. “Pressure feels better, it’s more satisfying…” Then she traced her nails across his chest to his abdomen. “Light touches tease, and leave you aching for more.”

“Like little kisses,” he verified, catching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then giving it the lightest of twists as he squeezed and Nat closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

“Yes…especially the ones that lead to hard, bruising ones.”

Well, since she suggested it, he let her breast go to catch her nape and pulled her forward. He captured her lips, crushing them and time seemed to stop. All that mattered was the way she moved her mouth against his, the way she slipped past his teeth and stroked his tongue. All he wanted was the grip of her hands as she slid them into his hair, then hooked her legs around his hips. The towel was in the way, but not even the heavy thickness of the fabric could hide the heat. Plastered to her, he wrapped his arms around her, and kept her close as the ferocity of the kiss gave away to something sweeter, but infinitely more dangerous.

Nat had claimed him a long time before, with a single mind blowing kiss in the middle of an adrenaline fueled nightmare. The fact she’d shifted right back into cool and collected mode had left him stumbling. When there was never time afterward to even ask about it without creating even more awkwardness, he’d let it go. But she’d left a mark on him, but nothing compared to this. Breaking away slowly, he stared into her unblinking eyes and couldn’t catch his breath.

Her claim on his soul was a hot, pulsing thing beneath his skin. But the naked openness in her green eyes, the way she seemed to smile with them even as she let him in. This was the unguarded sanctuary behind the vault where she locked herself away, the part of herself she walled off lest some sick bastard out of the twist of bastards who’d haunted the long years of her life plundered too deep and destroyed it.

Precious and fragile in her simple acceptance, he steadied his stance and rested his forehead to hers. Having Natasha in his life was a terrible privilege, one he wouldn’t squander, or treat with anything less than the reverence she deserved.

“And you’re already pulling away,” she whispered, but thank God it wasn’t disappointment scoring her tone.

“Not far,” he promised. “I want you Angel, don’t doubt that for a second.”

“But…?”

“No buts,” he said, cupping her cheek and smiling when she kissed his palm. “Not a single but…I want you.”

With a raised eyebrow, she touched two fingers to his towel. “Then are we negotiating the rules of the game? Or conceding to the victor?”

“I have a secret,” he confessed, because it burned inside of him. “It’s not mine to tell you.”

“So there is a but,” she murmured, licking her lips, and letting her hand fall away from the towel.

“When I make love to you,” he said deliberately choosing his words, because when he did it wasn’t just going to be him taking. He wanted to give everything, too. “When I do that, I want there to be no secrets between us.”

Tilting her head, she studied him and thank fuck her eyes didn’t shutter. She didn’t slip away from him into the shadows. “Do I get a say in that?”

“Of course,” he said, running his thumbs up her sides, and then settling his hands on her breasts, cupping them so he could draw circles with his thumbs against her nipples. Her lips parted at the contact, and her pupils dilated. “Touching you is addictive,” he confessed.

“You’re telling me,” she shifted, a bump of her hips as her thighs moved against his hips, then his towel fell away and she smiled. The flushed head of his cock bounced against his abdomen and she smiled. “I thought I’d level our discussion field.”

“Okay,” he whispered. A week ago, he’d probably already have turned red, but there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with feeling her gaze on him. He continued to massage her breasts, tempted to carry her out of the steamy bathroom and toward the bed in the other room—and at the same time, there was an intimacy inside this steam filled room, isolating them from the rest of the world. She eased forward, bracing her hands on his chest, then she slipped one down to brush against the flushed tip and he had to bite back a groan at the featherlight caress. A droplet of pre-cum dribbled out eagerly.

Nat grinned, and met his gaze. “Not every part of you is on board with this no secrets policy…”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not—but that particular piece of my anatomy hasn’t stopped thinking about you since the escalator in the mall.”

Surprise filled her features, and he slowed his caresses to focus on her startled gaze. “Steve, that was…”

“Two years ago,” he agreed, then pressed forward so his cock rested fully against her hand, and she wrapped her fingers around him. He sighed into the touch and closed his eyes. With soft, but firm fingers she began to stroke him and he shuddered. It was almost too much as his thoughts stuttered and his whole body just wanted to press into hers and lose himself there.

“That’s a hell of a thing to tell me, Rogers,” she teased him, circling her thumb over the tip and catching that bit of moisture. It eased the friction, and tormented him all at once. His balls drew up tight and he gave a little thrust into her grip. “Do you want to come like this, Steve?”

The question tickled over his senses, and he dragged his eyes open to fix on hers. “Angel…”

“Forget secrets, forget worries—just you and me, right here…do you want to come in my hand like you did in yours in the shower?” Her breasts were so heavy against his palms, and the nipples hard points, but at the same time, she was soft and perfect and then she stretched upward and he dipped his head to meet her kiss. She whispered against his lips, “There’s all kinds of ways to play this game, Steve…do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation, then slid one hand from her breast to the counter to brace himself as she dragged her hand up and down along his cock. It was taking everything in him to stay on his feet as his whole world seemed to narrow down to that contact. “Angel,” he exhaled her name.

“Shh,” she whispered, wrapping an arm around neck and pulling his mouth down to hers even as she added squeezing to her strokes and he began to push against her palm, the careful strokes gaining in speed. Nuzzling his mouth, she said, “You’re even more beautiful in person than you know. It’s not the muscles or the shoulders or the height…though, I like them all.”

She bit his lower lip, and the sharp sting had his eyes open to meet hers as he slipped his other hand from her breast to curve around her hip and pull her forward. He wanted to feel her against him even as she continued to rub his cock.

“Yeah?” Fuck, was that his voice? All rough, and raw and needy?

“Yeah,” she confirmed, her smile growing and he swore her eyes positively glowed. “It’s this right here—this beautiful openness when you trust me. I—I don’t know what I ever did to deserve that, but you make me feel worth it.”

“You are worth it, Nat,” he swore, and his breath caught as she dragged a thumb along the underside of his cock, tracing the vein, more drops leaking from the tip that she caught and added to her palm as she kept stroking it. “So fucking worth it…I want to give you everything.”

“I don’t need everything,” she promised him and then kissed him. The slow suck of her mouth against his tongue robbed him of thought. Then she palmed his balls, the careful roll of her fingers over his scrotum left him dizzy. She scraped a gentle finger along his perineum even as she increased the stroke of her other hand along the shaft, up over the glans, and then down again. The heat and friction coupled with the pressure of her mouth, and he thrust against her hand, his hips jerking and then he groaned as his balls tightened and everything dragged upward, suspending him in the moment, and then poured out of him a rush.

“Fuck,” he exhaled against her mouth, panting as he released a hot jet of cum right across her belly and then he couldn’t look away from it as she pumped him again, and another spurt jerked loose. It was probably the second most erotic thing he’d ever seen.

“Like I said,” she whispered, nuzzling his beard before another stroke pulled another spurt of cum from him and left his legs shaking. It was dripping down her belly, and he wanted to apologize, and at the same time he trembled. Even as he worried he might collapse, she wrapped her legs firmly around his hips and braced him. Sliding his fingers into her hair, he tugged her head back to meet her gaze as she said, “All I need is you.”

Then he kissed her, trying to pour every ounce of the pleasure she’d given him into the contact. If she hadn’t already staked a claim on his soul, he would have gladly surrendered it. Want and need twined together to tether him as firmly to her as she was wrapped around him. The press of her breasts to his chest, the slide of her belly to his, and the mess they were making pulled a laugh from him and he steadied his legs so he could pick her up and then cradled her against him.

“Thank you,” he told her and she grinned, running the fingers of one hand through his hair.

“My pleasure,” she informed him, but he shook his head.

“Not yet, but it will be.” He palmed the curve of her ass, but stilled when she shook her head.

“No,” she murmured, smoothing her fingers down his cheek. “This was all about you. Rule number one, pleasure is never bad…”

“Then why no?” The heat in her eyes said it wasn’t a rejection, but if she wanted to play then hell yes, he was in.

“Because I’m starving,” she said with a little smile. “And I want to know if that magical refractory period is repeatable.”

This time, he did go hot and he was pretty sure he blushed. Her delighted laugh was worth it. “It doesn’t seem fair…”

“What that you came and I didn’t?” She arched a brow.

“Well,” he said with a slow nod. “Yeah.”

“But not all pleasure is about coming, and rule number two,” she said, scratching the underside of his beard and he arched his head back, wanting to stretch like a damn cat at the contact. “There is no wrong way to share pleasure and I really enjoyed watching you come apart.”

“Yeah?” He eyed her, then glanced down at the mess he’d made. “Is it bad that I’m—really enjoying seeing me all over you.”

Natasha laughed, deep and throaty and it sent tingles down his spine. His cock gave a thoughtful twitch against the skin of her thigh and they both paused.

“Hmmm.” Her grin turned positively wicked, and Steve had to suppress a laugh. That was a dangerous look on Natasha, especially when she focused all of that energy on him. Not that he wanted to be anywhere else. “Marking your territory?”

A possessive thrill went through him, and he moved his hand to slide between her legs and cupped her mons, threading one finger between her slick labia and pressing it to her entrance. Bold as hell, he met her gaze. “When I mark it, you’ll know all about it, I promise.”

She lifted his dog tags, and held them up between them. “Pretty sure I did.”

The roughness of want gave way to the sweep of warmth. It was embarrassing how much it meant to see his tags hanging there. Belatedly, he realized the bracelet wasn’t on her wrist. He hadn’t seen her without it in quite a while, since the night she disappeared on them at the Tower. But she’d taken it off to follow him in here, and he didn’t have to ask why.

This wasn’t for anyone’s consumption but theirs. She never ceased to amaze him with her attention to details. Hell, he’d forgotten all about anyone but her until then.

“These are exactly where they belong,” he pressed a kiss to her fingers, before settling the chain back where it belonged. Then he eased his hand away from her, and savored the way she let out a breath as he drew his fingers across her mons. He could play there for a while, but what had she said? There was no such thing as wrong way to enjoy pleasure. Getting to watch her come while he savored her every reaction? He blew out a breath of his own.

He made a point of licking his finger, and smiling at the musky taste. That answered a question he hadn't even realized he'd had. Then he caught the towel they’d trapped between them, and he eased her thighs apart so he could clean up his mess. “I guess we need to get changed so we can make sure they didn’t give up trying to deliver our dinner while we were distracted.”

“Oh it’s here,” she said, stretching so he could clean her abs more easily, a playful smile hovering on her lips. “I actually came in to let you know it had arrived…”

“Then you stayed for the show?” He chuckled. “Do you have a bit of a voyeuristic kink, Angel?”

“Where you are concerned? Undoubtedly,” she said with a slow smile. “It was amazing to see you stroking yourself and the naked pleasure on your face. Trust me. It was even better up close when I got to do it.”

Shaking his head, he eased away to clean himself up, and then he set the towels aside to reach for his clothes, and instead of pulling on the shirt, he offered it to her. She let him tug it over her head, then pushed her arms through the sleeves.

Ignoring his clean briefs, he just pulled on the sweatpants before his gradually hardening cock distracted both of them. Lifting her off the counter, he set her on her feet and then dragged his knuckles lightly down her cheek. “Will you help me figure something out later?”

She lifted her brows. “What do you want to know?”

“Whether I have a voyeuristic kink or not,” he admitted, then drew the fingers down to tease her breast through the shirt. “I like touching you, that I already know. I adore kissing you. And I can’t wait to explore the rest of you…but I want to see you touch yourself.”

The thought sent another pulse of heat from his belly to his cock. Water, food, and then Natasha…it definitely held all types of temptation.

“I really like this side of you Steve,” she told him, running her hand over his chest. The casual little touches, the long stroking caresses, and the fact she kept leaning in to him eased something inside of him he hadn’t even realized was there.

“I like all sides of you,” he promised, then reached past her to open the door. The flush off cooler air from the room beyond dispelled the smell of sex and steam from the bathroom, and he sighed. “Well, every side I’ve seen, but I’m really looking forward to finding the rest.”

Grinning, she caught his hand and lead him out to where a table had been set up, candles lit, and a bottle of wine chilling. The rest of the lights in the room had been dimmed and in the distance beyond the patio, he had a spectacular view of the lit falls framing her wearing his shirt and nothing else while the candlelight seemed to catch all the gold in her red hair.

“Wow,” he exhaled.

“You like?” She looked terribly pleased with herself, and why shouldn’t she?

“Yeah. Starting to think you might like me, Romanoff,” he admitted, and ducked his head a little. Sometimes…

“Good,” she told him and he shifted forward to pull the chair out for her to sit, and he pressed a kiss to her cheek, then cupped her chin as he dropped to one knee. “Hey…” Concern filtered into her gaze. “You okay?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Sometimes I worry I’ll take this for granted, and I never want to do that.”

“Take what for granted?” She frowned.

“You,” he told her. “This.” He hadn’t told her about Bucky remembering, and it hung over him, but at the same time… “Being with you. Waiting to be with you…even thinking about building a life with you, and with Buck…” He wasn’t not going to include him. Bucky was a part of them, even if he wasn’t there. Tonight might be about he and Natasha, but Bucky was a part of _them_. “I can’t picture how I got here, I woke up after seventy years…and all I saw was grief, and all I felt was loss.”

She chased both of those away. She slid out of the chair and then he had his arms around her, holding her tight.

“You give me hope, Angel,” he admitted. He was supposed to be the guy who lead the charge, who stood up against whatever hell came for them. Not quitting was ingrained into his DNA, but accepting that he had a right to anything more? Who, him?

“Steve…you’re shaking,” she whispered, locking her arms tighter around her.

He chuckled, and tasted the salt of tears against his lips. “I’m okay,” he said. “Might be a little light-headed and crazy about you, but I’m going to be okay.”

With gentle soothing strokes, she eased the trembling from him and he kept his face pressed against the crook of her neck. Pressing a kiss to her throat, he said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I thought I was the only one who thought they weren’t worth it.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Nat,” he swore, and eased back to look at her. “Of course you are.”

“So are you,” she said caressing his cheek. Then his stomach intruded with a gurgle and they both laughed. “So I think we are in agreement—we’re worth it?”

He nodded, and then they unfolded themselves and he got her back in her chair before he moved to his. They were terrifically underdressed for a beautiful meal, and he didn’t want to change a damn thing. Nat’s smile across the table was warmer than the candles, and her laughter when he opened the wine and it gave a little _pop._ He wasn’t expecting the bubbles in the white wine, but she looked pleased enough he was willing to give it a try.

When she lifted her glass, he said, “To you,” before she could. “To being true to yourself every step of the way. Even when it pitted us against each other or seemed to. To being fearless in kicking my ass when I needed it, and for smacking me in the head when I needed that, too. To being there for me, and for Bucky, and every other member of this team…for showing me I wasn’t alone and I didn’t need to be. And to you for showing me how to live again…I couldn’t do any of this without you.”

Her eyebrows raised, and her expression transformed, softening with every word he said. “And I was just going to say to long hot steamy showers and a voyeurism kink…”

Laughing, he touched his glass to hers. “And to that, definitely to that.”

The silver dome tops hid steaks, and fat baked potatoes, and the perfect mix of steamed vegetables. His stomach rumbled loudly, and Nat shook with suppressed laughter. When her stomach answered his, he gave her a triumphant look, but the grin on his face wouldn’t ease.

Soon they were digging into the food, and in between sectioning the steak, they kept locking gazes. It was the most intense while relaxed meal he’d ever consumed. Nat took a drink of the wine and sighed.

“Good?” Uncertain if it was a satisfied sigh or she was waiting for him to do more.

“Oh yeah, the food, the wine—the company.”

“I would rate that in a different order, but I’m not complaining,” he teased, and she grinned. Having managed to devour more than half his steak, he tested the wine and while he might not have Nat’s palate, he couldn’t object. “So, we have the first two rules, what’s the third one?”

She considered the question as she sipped her wine then said, “Rule number three is whatever we want it to be.”

“Sex or us?” He queried, and the fact they could talk so bluntly was a bit of a fascination for him.

“Do we have to choose one or the other exclusively?” She ran her foot up his leg and then settled it against his thigh, he ran his fingers over the top of it to clasp her ankle. The contact settled the restlessness to push through the meal and pull her out of the chair to sit with him.

“Not at all. So we get to be whatever we want it to be and we play however we want to play?” He could definitely get behind this plan.

“Yes,” she said, curling her toes against his thigh. “But if you’re ever uncomfortable—even a little. Tell me.”

“That goes for you too,” he amended, squeezing her ankle once before returning to cut his steak. “I don’t want you to ever do something for me you don’t want to.”

“Deal,” she agreed. They were quiet for a few more bites, and her foot was warm against his leg, and her gaze even warmer every time they connected. “Do you want to ask me anything?”

“I might,” he admitted. “Do you want to ask me things?”

“I might,” she parroted him, then she dabbed her lips with a napkin before pushing her plate away and cradling her wine glass as she studied him.

“Go for it.”

“You first,” she countered. “I asked first, so you get to go first.”

Steve laughed. “But ladies should always go first.”

“James would say I’ve never been a lady.”

No, he might tease, but he'd never mean it. Still... “Bucky can go get stuffed too, you’re always a lady to me.”

Back and forth they went, but it was fun so he didn’t complain. Finally, she rolled her eyes when he said he was perfectly fine waiting for her. “You’re not going to give on this one, are you?”

“No ma’am, I can go all night.”

“Hmm,” she said with a delighted little moan. “I hope so.”

His ears caught fire, and he stared at her dryly. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she promised then took another sip of her wine. He lifted the bottle and when she nodded, he refilled it.

“Well, we’ll have to find out if that’s even a possibility,” he told her honestly. Here was hoping he didn’t disappoint.

“Okay—if I get to ask anything,” she said leaning back, and stretching her other leg out to set that foot in his lap, too. He smiled, bracing for it. “If I could do one thing for you that you’ve always wanted, what would it be?”

That question surprised him, so he considered it. Her face was wide open and full of curiosity, her posture was relaxed and she looked damn good in his shirt. “One thing I’ve always wanted?” At her nod, he blew out a breath then shook his head slowly before saying… “I want to build a home,” he admitted. “It’s not a place—it’s the people. It’s you and Buck. You two are my home. That’s what I want. What about you?”

Nat’s eyes widened and she laughed. “I can’t top that.”

“You don’t have to top anything, just tell me what you want.” He knew it was a hard question for her to answer. She seemed to want so very little.

“I already have it,” she admitted. “You and James. You two were what I wanted…and you’re letting me.”

“That’s my answer,” he teased. “You just co-opted it.”

Her snort made him grin wider. “Okay, fine, we have…” She paused a little, and it was as though she were struggling to form words for a moment or maybe she wasn’t sure what to say. “We have a home.” Wonder punctuated the end of the sentence and it hit him like a thunderbolt.

She’d never had one. No home. No childhood. No promise of the future. What had she said about not worrying about the past because she couldn’t change it or sweating the future, but living in the present because they had what they had when they had it?

“We have a home,” he assured her as he put his hand on her ankle again and gave it a squeeze. “You will always have a home with me, Angel. If you didn’t realize it before, I hope you do now.”

She hid her mouth behind the wine glass for a moment, then she nodded. “I told Clint that I was happy,” she admitted and his heart squeezed.

“Yeah?”

A little nod. “Yeah.”

“Are you still happy?” He stroked little circles against her anklebone.

“Very,” she admitted. “Even if you were trying to frustrate me earlier.”

“It’s good for you,” he remarked, trying to get his own thrill fisted and under control. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off by whooping with excitement. He made her happy and that pleased him more than seeing his cum on her skin. “Besides, you like a challenge.”

“You know what Rogers…” She grinned, letting the sentence dangle as she ran her toes lightly along his groin, and his half-hard cock.

“No,” he admitted with an exhale as she stroked him. “But I think I’m about to find out.”

“Only if you want to…” She sipped her wine, dipping her gaze in a suggestion of shyness. “I know you wanted to go slow, and I got a little pushy. So we can always just curl up and go to sleep.”

“It’s late,” he admitted, glancing at the clock. He put the silver dome back over his empty plate and wiped his hands off with a napkin before setting it aside and then locked gazes with her as he eased her feet out of his lap. “Are you tired?”

“Are you?” She challenged.

“Well,” he admitted as he stood and circled the table and took her wine glass and put it on the table. She watched him with an amused grin as he held out a hand, then she set her hand in his and he tugged her upward. “I am old.”

“A fossil,” she agreed with him.

Shaking his head slowly, he dipped his head and nipped her lower lip as she grinned. “It’s not usually polite to call a lady old, even in retaliation.”

“Don’t let me stop you…” She looped her arms around his neck, and his shirt rose and gave him a lovely view of her bare thighs and his gut clenched.

“You know—you’re not a relic, you’re a treasure.” He slid his hands under ass and lifted her. She locked her thighs onto his hips and balanced like she belonged there.

“Flattery, Captain?”

“Truth, Widow.” Then between kisses he added. “Absolute truth, Angel.”

When she sighed and opened her mouth to his, he sampled the taste of wine on her lips and sucked on her tongue until she fisted her hand in his hair.

“But I do want one other thing…” he confessed.

“You want to watch me?” She murmured.

The idea left him hard all over. “Yes.” He’d meant something else, but his brain shut down at having his earlier request given back to him in her throaty voice. “Very much.”

“Okay…but you can’t touch,” she told him.

He blinked. “What?”

“I’ll show you—you can see me get off, but you have to watch until I’m done. No touching.”

He swallowed. The idea was already a turn on, and she wanted him to keep his hands to himself while she…

“You okay?” Amusement colored her voice and he nodded slowly. His mouth dry at the image, the game took on a whole different kind of texture with that offer on the table. She drew a finger down his cheek, then across his lower lip. “I promise…I’ll make it worth your while.”

Of that he had no doubt. “After…I can touch?”

“Oh I hope so,” she admitted and his pulse leapt.

“Where do you want me?” was all he needed to know.

He’d said he wanted to wait until they were ready, and he’d meant. Thank God they were both ready though. Because he didn’t think he could go back to waiting.

Not anymore.


	38. Diversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat and Steve spend the night together...

**Chapter Thirty-Eight**

**Diversion**

**Natasha**

 

 

A wrecked Steve Rogers was not something she ever thought she would see—not this way, not so intimately and without any barriers to give him space to create a distance. After he set her down, she patted the bed next to her. It was a huge king with a ton of pillows. Big enough he could sprawl out and no part of him hung off the edge anywhere. When she’d slipped into the shower, she really hadn’t expected to find him masturbating, but she was not sorry.

Not even a little.

Blown pupils focused on her, and she ran her fingers down his face to cup his cheek. It had been—a long day. But what days of theirs weren’t long in some fashion or other? They’d been sharing a bed for quite a while, sharing space for a lot longer, and if they were both honest—they’d been sharing their lives. But everything had a caveat, a safety pin, a firm boundary beyond which they didn’t cross.

Stroking her nails lightly through his beard, she smiled. It was so damn soft now. It had been bristly at first and she enjoyed the scratchy texture, but as it had grown in and thickened, it was soft and she loved to just stroke it, to scratch under his chin, almost as much as running her fingers through his hair.

It didn’t hurt that he reacted like a cat, even if he wasn’t always aware of it. He settled on his side, propping his head on one hand, but despite his posture he was far from relaxed. Tension corded his muscles, leaving his biceps taut, and the line of his shoulders stiff. Even his abdominals tightened and released with every breath. He had himself on a leash, but it frayed like a poorly constructed leash.

“Hey,” she said, gliding her hand into his hair and fisting it lightly. The tug sharp enough to get his attention, but never enough to hurt. He focused on her, his breathing coming in a little sharper pants. He was so worked up and all they’d really done was play and flirt, and this right here was why she’d wanted some measure of control—something to ease him down before she built him back up. His first time should be special, and he deserved someone who would take care of him.

He blinked slowly, then blew out a breath. “Sorry…”

“It’s okay to be nervous.” It was new. Everything they’d been doing for the last few days had been new.

The question flickered in his eyes but never passed his lips. Was she nervous her first time? He was never going to ask her that. But she didn’t want to leave him hanging…

“I was nervous the night we danced—you asked me on a real date, and I’d never been on one before. Not as me.” She stroked her hand through his hair, gently teasing her nails against his scalp. “New experiences can be overwhelming, there’s always the worry that you’re not prepared, or something will happen and you’ll mess it up. Or the worst—that you’ll fail somehow.” The last was one concern she had about every choice she made. Failure wasn’t acceptable. Decades of programming aside, she tried to piece together a way to accept it more easily but she doubted she’d ever get there.

Steve swallowed, and his throat jerked convulsively.

“So, let me set your mind at ease…about a few things. First—did you enjoy what we did in the bathroom? Touching me? Kissing? Letting me stroke you off?” His nostrils flared with each description she added.

“Yes,” he managed then shook his head.

“Dinner was good?”

A little more of the tension eased in his expression. “Yes.”

“And you still want this?” She motioned to herself. “To watch me and test your voyeuristic nature?”

The faintest hint of red warmed his face, but his eyes burned a little hotter. “Yes.”

“Good.” She sat up and faced him before stripping off the shirt and tossing it aside. “Remember something for me…you’re not going to fail at this. You’re not going to mess up. And no one is ever prepared for how they feel…sometimes it’s intense, and sometimes it’s just joyful.” She grinned. “Sometimes you’ll laugh because—it’s funny and it feels good.”

She ran her hand along the chain, then circled her fingers around one nipple. His gaze tracked every movement.

“But that’s the beauty of it—the only wrong way to do any of this?” At the suggestion, he dragged his gaze up to meet her eyes. “Is if it doesn’t feel good.”

Such a simple thing, and one so easily forgotten by too many. Pleasure should be pleasurable for all involved.

Steve nodded slowly. “So if it doesn’t feel good…”

“Then you say something,” she said, cupping her breasts and giving them a squeeze. The sleepy rope of tension in her belly had been on low simmer throughout dinner, and gradually began to wind tighter through her. Steve was a gorgeous guy, all that golden skin, heavy muscle, and beautiful blue eyes. That his lips were wet, his mouth open, his pupils blown and his heart racing because he was looking at her?

Yeah, there was something heady in that. Enough to leave her a little more tipsy than even the wine could pretend. She teased and pulled at her nipples, and she held his gaze not missing the way his hand twitched or how rigid he held himself still.

“What are you thinking?” she gave her breasts a bit of a rest as she moved her hands up and down across her torso, circling back to him. The taut peaks of her nipples seemed to grow more sensitive as she teased her nails around them, and across, never a lot of pressure.

“Does that feel good?” He asked, then licked his lips.

“Teasing myself?” At his slow nod, she smiled. “Hmm…it feels…a little on this side of too much anticipation. I know how I liked to be touched. I know how much pressure is going to feel good and if it’s not quite enough, I know to push it. Sometimes I like to edge pain…”

A frown darkened his brows. “Why?”

With a little shrug, she pinched one nipple between her thumb and forefinger and gave it a harsh twist. The sharp bite sent a spark through her system, and she held the pressure long enough for the tip of the nipple to darken. Steve leaned up a little. “It’s an intense sensation, blood pools, kind of like when your cock engorges, and the tip becomes super sensitive?” Then she released the nipple and let out a breath as the blood flow reestablished, and leaning forward, she said, “Blow…just lightly across it.”

He pursed his lips and the soft flow of air sent a shiver across her skin, but it pulled the tension in her core tight, and she let out a shuddering breath. The most difficult challenge was not containing her reactions. Steve needed to be able to see her, to respond to her, and to see how she felt—it would make him more comfortable even if hiding and silencing herself were a default for her.

The nipple tightened and the pulse that traveled to her cunt and back sent a thrill through her. She opened her eyes and grinned at his fascinated reaction, but when he lifted a hand, she shook her head and he groaned.

Collapsing back on the bed, he laughed. “Not sure I’m a voyeur…”

“So it’s not turning you on to watch me play with myself?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he admitted. “I—really like that part.” He rolled back to his side and slid a hand over to rest near her leg, but not quite touching. “I like touching you, too.”

And he was relaxing, the nervous energy vibrating over his skin settled and there was a purpose in those eyes. Turning, she fixed the pillows, then leaned back against them. Anticipation curved through her, because she liked the idea of him touching her, too.

“Not yet,” she murmured and hid a smile at the fierce gleam in his eyes. His jaw firmed and she found herself the focus of all that determination. It made her shiver, and goosebumps raced over her skin. Who said he had to physically touch her to ramp up her need?

He blew another breath across her nipple, and glanced up at her with a sly grin and she chuckled as she ran a hand over her abdomen. “Not touching.”

“No,” she agreed with him, still smiling. “You’re not.”

That was all the encouragement he needed to move right alongside her until the heat rolling off of him kissed her skin but there were still millimeters separating them. “Still not touching,” he murmured, nearly brushing his nose against hers and she leaned into the pillows and laughed.

“You’re feeling pretty cocky, aren’t you?” She dared him, still twitching with laughter.

“Maybe,” he retorted, tracking his gaze down to her hand as she rubbed it against her abdomen. She’d been giving him time to adjust but he kept tickling her with his reactions and it was distracting as hell. “You know your muscles ripple when you laugh? They contract and flex.”

“So do yours,” she pointed out.

“Yours are much more interesting,” he said, waving off her observation. He moistened his lips and leaned up a little, not quite hovering over her, but very focused on her hand. “You can’t do yours in the shower can you?”

“Sure I can,” she told him. Maybe she was corrupting him—a little. “You haven’t used the shower on my floor, have you?”

He raised an eyebrow and looked up at her. “Do I want to know?”

“Oh yeah,” she promised. “Multifunction hand held shower head…water pressure can be delicious.”

His eyes widened and she could almost see the images moving through his mind.

“Lean back against the tile, angle it just right, and you can deliver the most wonderful clit massage…” While she hadn’t thought it possible, his pupils dilated even further. “There are plenty toys—dildos, bullet massagers…they can help in a pinch. Some are waterproof, most aren’t.” Yes, she was definitely corrupting him, because she could almost see the questions dancing on the tip of his tongue, so she lifted one leg and turned her knee out as she slid a hand down across the smooth skin toward her cunt.

Steve didn’t say a word but he pushed up on one arm, and she kept her gaze on him as she parted her labia. Fuck, she was wet as hell and that was all him. Tension had her clenching her buttocks and straining up even as she made a slow circle of her clit, almost exaggerating the motion just for him.

The bed dipped and moved, then Steve shifted to the foot of the bed and moved up toward her legs. Understanding kindled through her and she parted her legs farther to make room for him. His breath tickled her thighs, and glanced down to find him looking up at her. “Good view?”

Even in the candle light and dimness of the room, she had no questions about his night vision.

“Yes,” he exhaled, and then took a deep breath. That sent a shudder through her system as he seemed to savor the scent. “You smell fantastic.”

Fuck. She hadn’t expected the raw compliment or how hot it would leave her. Who was tormenting who here? While the initial goal had been to make him as comfortable as possible, she had a feeling they’d long since moved over that line into exploring what turned them both on.

Channel clutching at the emptiness, his nearness as much a provocative tease for her system as the fact she kept skimming just her nails against the tip of her clit, not quite disturbing the hood but aware of how engorged it was beginning to feel. Tighter and tighter she wound herself, before she applied pressure.

Just two fingers, she began to rub steadily growing stronger circles against her clit, and she couldn’t look away from the bunch of Steve’s muscles as he held himself there between her legs like an avid audience. When the strain pushed her hips upward, she let her head go back and just surrendered to the sensations she woke.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are…” Steve seemed to exhale the words and they tipped her right over the edge, the unexpected switch cascading heat through her cunt, and she gasped out a breath as the tension unfurled with sparks.

An unexpected, “fuck…” fell from her lips and she couldn’t quite restrain her sharp panting breaths as her heart pounded. She lifted her fingers away from herself as rush of moisture soaked her further, and Steve caught her hand before it could pull away.

The haze across her vision left her a little giddy. She hadn’t counted on his nearness escalating her own reactions. He pulled her fingers to his mouth and murmured. “I can touch now, right?” Then without waiting for an answer he sucked her fingers into his mouth and she had to plant a foot against the bed when her back arched. His free hand pinned her hip, keeping her in place.

Releasing her hand, he pressed a kiss to the inside of one thigh, then the other. His beard tickled her, sensation stacking on sensation, then he licked her from entrance to clit and her body went up in flames again as he sucked the tight bud against his teeth. It was too much and she jerked, but the second orgasm crashed over her with a hell of a lot more intensity than the first and she clamped her teeth against the sound that tried to escape.

“Angel,” he whispered, and then he crawled up along her, and she found him gazing down at her a heartbeat before his mouth crashed into hers and then she had all that delicious weight pressing her into the bed. He dwarfed her, and his skin was so hot against hers, and she twined her arms around him, digging her nails into his back as he dragged his cock against her in a slow grind.

At some point, he’d shed his sweatpants but she only cared in as much as there were no barriers as he devoured her mouth and she could taste herself on him, but every bump of his cock to her clit sent another spark through her system. Sweat dotted her flesh and she scraped her teeth over his lower lip when he lifted his head, and his harsh panting breaths matched her own.

She’d lost the thread of seduction somewhere along the way and it unraveled around both of them, but he pressed kisses to her face, then along her jaw to her ear, and in a move he’d used on the deck, he sucked on an earlobe and she clamped her thighs to his hips, arching up to rub against his cock even as she ached to pull him inside. The strain against emptiness, had her cunt clutching at the air and then he slid his hand into her hair and in a move she’d used earlier, he fisted the strands and tugged lightly.

Her scalp lit up, but it only edged her deeper against the pleasure of his body stroking hers. Sensation sparked where her nipples pressed against his chest, and then he whispered against her ear, “Angel…I…”

“Yes,” she said, her nails on his back, then dragging them down to his ass and rotating her hips in a half circle to increase the friction. “Anything you want,” she told him. Then his mouth moved back to hers and he slid a hand between them, she half expected to feel him sinking into her but as his tongue teased against hers, he pressed two fingers against her clit and her mind went white as he mirrored her movements and she forgot how to breathe.

The pressure eased and she swam back up to find him staring down at her wearing the most adorable smile. “You really are beautiful.”

“So you’re more of a participant than a voyeur,” she said with a shaky laugh.

“I think so,” he agreed, rubbing his hands down her arms. “You’re shaking.”

“It’s a good shaking,” she promised. The heavy weight of his erection rested solidly against her cunt, and she licked her lips.

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” she assured him, then flexed her hands against his butt as she shifted her feet to flatten against the bed and widened the cradle of her legs. It slid him against her labia, and the pressure against her clit sent another wave of sparks across her vision. It was almost too much, but she fought to keep her breath as even as possible. “You okay?”

“I’m way better than okay,” he admitted, and he dipped his forehead to hers. “I want—I wanted to push into you but…”

“But?” She pressed her hand between them, easing against the inside of his hip then brushing her fingers along the rigid length of his cock.

“I don’t want to hurt you…”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” she said, slipping her fingers around him as he lifted his hips, and he glanced from her eyes to down between them. “Come on…put your hand here…” The trembling eased some, but she was still shaking and every nerve was lit up.

“Nat…” Steve worried at his lip as he tangled his fingers on hers around his cock. “Are you sure? I always forget just how much bigger than you I am…”

A soft laugh escaped her and she gave him a gentle squeeze. “I can handle you big guy, I thought we proved that a long time ago—but here’s a wonderful secret about anatomy. I can stretch…”

“Yeah,” he exhaled the syllable like the idea added a fresh layer of arousal for him. “You’re very flexible.”

Together, they positioned him and she ignored her hammering heart and anticipation. She focused on Steve, and lifted a hand to cup his face so he’d look at her. “Fast or slow…remember. No wrong way to do this…how do you want me?”

If she’d thought him wrecked before it had nothing on his expression as he pressed forward, and the sweet burn of him stretching her had her blowing out a breath and fighting the urge to lift her hips to meet his thrust. He inched in, sweat dotting his forehead as he bit his lip in concentration and then he whispered… “Angel, I have to…”

“You can,” she told him, and he slammed home to the hilt and she swallowed his groan with a kiss that was all teeth, tongue, and gasping breaths. Then she had all that power and strength pounding into her and she met him thrust for thrust. Maybe she was too sensitive, but the drag of his thrusts against her swollen flesh triggered another orgasm and she clung to him as they came together, again and again. The first stutter of his hips was her only warning, and he buried his face against her throat as he shuddered and the heat blossomed deep inside as he came.

She floated on the sensations, cradling him tight as he collapsed all of his weight against her. The crush was an unexpected and delicious side effect and she closed her eyes, holding him there as her pulse slowed. He’d softened but lack of movement kept him firmly in place and she smiled as his breathing gradually steadied.

Stroking a hand along his back, she indulged in the way he felt against her. A little laugh escaped, and Steve lifted his head to look at her. Pleasure spread out and she grinned at his questioning look. “Now I know…” she let it hang out there, and he lifted his brows.

“Know what?”

“You,” she murmured, gliding her fingers up to his shoulders. His shudders had tapered off, but the wrecked expression and sleepy joy in his growing smile made her sigh. “Fossil has game.” She couldn’t help it, but his eyes narrowed and then he pinned her to the bed and kissed the hell out of her.

A groan escaped her as he moved to kiss her throat and then continued his slow assault along her chest, he tangled his fingers in the dog tag chain and said, “This fossil is going treasure hunting…let’s see how much game my treasure has, hmm?”

Another laugh bubbled out of her that his teeth scraping her nipple turned to a gasp. His downward motion slipped him free of her, but her whole body seemed to buzz with excitement as he cupped one breast and began to suck hard against the curve of the other.

Fuck, she let out a little groan and bucked, but she wasn’t going anywhere and he glanced up at her. “All night was the other question, right?”

Oh hell. Then there weren’t any words, just chuckles, strokes, laughs, caresses, smiles, nips, soft gasping breaths, kisses, and bites until he thrust into her again and pushed all the breath out of her lungs in one long groan—she was going to be so sore the next day.

It was glorious.

 

 

A few hours later, she sprawled against the pillows with a glass of ice water as Steve returned from the bathroom with a damp washcloth and a pleased expression. The light from the bathroom slanted over him, and she savored the view. He really was a beautiful man. More, she loved how relaxed he was and open. There was a fluid grace to his movements and she braced herself for the chill as he ran the washcloth up her leg.

Her cunt was definitely more than a little sore—all night might have been ambitious, but she wasn’t giving up on her own recovery period. The push, the stretch, and the friction left her swollen and sensitive. She exhaled as the cold cloth glided against her labia, and then he carefully began to clean up his mess especially where it had dripped along her thighs.

“You okay?” He checked, a small frown on his forehead but the smile straining at his lips betrayed him.

“Fishing for compliments?” The question ended on another little gasp as he pressed the cold against her clit. It had definitely been sore after he spent about thirty minutes trying to figure out all the ways he could used his teeth and tongue on it. But fuck had it been worth it.

The last round had been her mouth on him, and she discovered he really liked having his balls played with while she sucked him off. Definitely information to keep on file for later.

“I’m pretty sure the fact you screamed was all the compliment I needed,” he said, and his grin grew. He had pretty much shattered her the last time around. “You’re so quiet…and then…wow.”

Natasha laughed and then handed him the glass of water. They were both a little dehydrated, and he set the washcloth aside before settling on the pillows next to her and slipping an arm around her. They were both hot, but neither one of them wanted to crack open the door and let in the much colder air. Still, she settled against his shoulder, and slid a leg over his so they could cuddle without overheating.

“Good,” she said, sliding her fingers through his and then turning her head to press a kiss to his fingertips. “But I’ll give you a compliment happily if you’d like…”

He chuckled, trailing his fingers up and down her arm. “I don’t need compliments…that was beyond anything I imagined, and…”

When he went quiet for a long moment, she prompted, “And?”

“And,” he said with a long, slow exhale. “I thought I’d feel—changed.”

“Aww, I didn’t rock your world,” she tilted her head back to study his expression. She was only half-joking. Because being with Steve was everything she’d thought it would be and more, and she did not want to be the one who messed up his first time.

With a light kiss to her forehead, he met her gaze. “You rocked more than my world, Angel. I promise—I meant I thought I would feel like someone else…”

“You thought having sex would change you as a person?” She’d read those stories in books, those fantasies about how sex could turn a person’s world view inside out or give them a confidence they’d never experienced before.

“Maybe?” He frowned. “Is that stupid?”

“No,” she told him, lifting a hand to stroke his beard lightly. “You went into Project Rebirth as Steve Rogers, and you came out—Steve Rogers.”

“Yeah but I had a different body…”

“But you were still you,” she reminded him. Then turning she curled against his side and met his gaze. “You were different on the outside, but not in here.” She spread her fingers over his heart. “You’re still you—a sexy, handsome, smart, funny guy with really distinct ideas of politeness and honor.”

Touching two fingers to her face, he stared at her. “I adore you,” he told her, and the fierceness in those words wrapped around her and held her tight. “I promised myself I’d never push you, and I’m not going to start now—but I adore you. Touching you is a gift that I will never get tired of, and maybe I’m not different, but I feel closer to you than ever. Working with you, dancing with you—making love with you—you take my breath away, Angel. Don’t ever give it back.”

She cupped his cheek, then leaned up to kiss him. It wasn’t long or passionate or even filled with fire. It was a simple intimacy, a promise and an affirmation. “I like being able to do that whenever I want.”

“Whenever,” he assured her. “Anytime. Anywhere.”

With a laugh, she rubbed her cheek to his shoulder. Then he caught her hand, matching their fingers to each other and he sighed. His gaze wasn’t on her anymore, but on their hands.

“I can almost hear the heavy thoughts stomping back in here.” She curled her fingers into his, then pulled their hands down to rest against his chest.

“It’s just…”

She hushed, giving him time to pull it together.

“Nat…”

“Is it James’ secret, Steve?” He’d mentioned it earlier—the secret he didn’t want between them before they made love and it weighed on him.

His gaze jerked to meet hers and he nodded slowly. “It feels a little like a betrayal to say anything—and it feels the same not to say anything, too.”

Caught between a rock and a hard place. “He’s your best friend.”

“And you’re—”

“Someone who cares about you both. Someone who wants your friendship intact no matter what.” She never wanted to come between them. It had been one of the driving factors in keeping her distance, even if neither of then had been willing to let her. And now… “Steve—I trust you. I trust James.” It wasn’t even a struggle to admit. “That’s all I need to know.”

“You ever worry something is too good to be true?” The quiet question made her laugh.

“Every day.” She pressed a kiss to his chest just above his heart. “Need me to pinch you?”

“No,” he assured her. “I don’t want to wake up if this is a dream. I’m happy right here.” A yawn split his jaw, and he squeezed her a little closer. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmured, his admission filling her with a kind of breathless joy.

His eyes were heavy, and she rubbed slow circles against his chest as his breathing began to even out. Bit by bit, he slipped into sleep and she couldn’t resist just watching him as his already relaxed expression eased and his impossibly long lashes made her sigh.

Sleep didn’t rush forward to claim her. The fatigue and soreness in her muscles told her she needed to rest, but she didn’t want the moment to end. The candles had burned lower, dripping wax onto the tablecloth. The light from the bathroom illuminated the room with a cast of shadows. Across Steve, she gazed at the sliding door and beyond. The illuminated falls were barely visible at this angle.

She looked back up at Steve, then tucked her head against his shoulder and flattened her hand on his chest. Listening and feeling him breath lulled her, and chased away the shadow of sadness that tried to steal inside. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to think about that now.

Dawn cut across the room when she blinked slowly. Apparently she had fallen asleep, and at some point, she and Steve had moved apart. He sprawled on the bed, but his hand rested on her lower back while she slept on her stomach. Pushing up to her elbows, she glanced around for a clock, and yawned. Her bladder complained so she shifted and went to move out from under Steve’s hand only to have it tighten and then she was dragged back against him.

Laughing, she caught his hand. “Easy there big boy…”

“Don’t go,” he murmured against her neck, face nuzzling into her hair.

“I have to pee,” she soothed. “I’ll be right back.”

He made a grumpy noise.

“Shh,” she whispered, stroking his arm until gradually, bit-by-bit, he relaxed again and she slid out from under his arm. Sitting, she glanced back at him. He was on his side, one arm outstretched to where she’d been and though his eyes were closed, a little frown tightened his expression. “Shh,” she repeated, then brushed her fingers against his cheek then over his hair until the frown eased and his breathing deepened.

Satisfied he really was asleep, she pushed off the bed and made her way to the bathroom. The soreness had given way to just a pleasant ache. There were little bruises and hickeys all over her neck, and chest, half-faded as well and she chuckled. Had the marks she’d left on his back survived the night?

After emptying her bladder, she washed her hands, then brushed her teeth. Her hair was a wreck of curls and bedhead—one thing sex did not do for her was leave her hair remotely intact the next day—not if it was good sex.

And sex with Steve definitely ranked well beyond good. Bracing her hands on the counter, she closed her eyes and then began stretching. From her feet, to her calves, to quads, then lower back and back. She tested and stretched every muscle. The pull against her cunt, the reminder she could almost feel him still deep inside just made her smile wider.

Way better than good.

The longer she stretched the better a shower sounded. She let the water heat up before slipping underneath it and then just stood there letting it pound against her shoulders and spine then soaked her hair down. A murmur of Steve’s voice from the other room penetrated her lazy state and she cracked an eye open.

She couldn’t make out the words, but it was definitely his deep voice. Damn, she’d hoped he would still be asleep so she could wake him up properly. Mumbling, she did a quick wash, before shutting the water off and wrapping a towel around her hair, and another around her torso before padding back out to their room.

Steve sat on the edge of the bed, and he gave her a smile then pulled the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker. “She’s here now and you’re on speaker…”

“Good,” Tony said, his voice agitated. “Red, I need you and Rogers to head back today.”

“Okay,” she sighed, and packed away the disappointment before sitting on the bed next to Steve and working the towel gently against her hair. “What’s up?”

“It’s probably nothing…”

Steve frowned and shook his head when she glanced at him. He didn’t know either. “Tony?” Steve prompted. “Is it the bio material?”

“No, that’s—still being problematic. I’ve been in the lab since I got back. This new stuff is—fascinating. I’m only about halfway through reading the files Hagen got, they’ve been unearthing this stuff in the ocean, nearly all of it. Three or four primary sites, all in the Arctic ocean, even the pieces we thought came from the Gulf didn’t, they were probably just sent there for processing. This is some seriously fascinating stuff, but they’ve been working on this for a couple of decades, and it wasn’t until about four years ago that they made any kind of serious progress. The sample you found—off the chart energy readings, but stable. I don’t know that it’s arc reactor stable, but the promise of clean, long term energy is there.”

The enthusiasm bubbled in his voice side by side with the sound of fatigue. “Don’t plug it into anything,” she advised. “We don’t want to know if it goes boom.”

“Definitely not doing that, and there’s a few tests I want to run when you’re back here, but that wasn’t why I called,” he trailed off a moment, then seemed to refocus again. “Barnes is gone.”

Nat’s heart fisted and Steve went tense. “What?”

“He’s gone—not in the Tower. No word on where he went or when he’d be back. His phone is on your floor. He’s a ghost.”

She frowned and glanced at Steve. “Maybe he went for a run?”

“Yeah, thought of that…Barton’s not here either.” There was a sound of something dropping and Tony swore. “Look, I was in the lab all night, when I released the lock down, Friday informed me that both Barton and Barnes were offsite. Not so worrying, but—Barton’s on an anklet, only the anklet is here and transmitting happily. Clint isn’t. Barnes isn’t. Friday tracked them to the garage, they left in Clint’s old jeep, and we don’t have eyes on them.”

“When did they leave?” She was stripping off the towel and heading for her bag for clothes, Steve was a half step behind her and he set the phone on the table.

Tony was quiet for a long, stretched out moment. Then he said, “Before I got back last night…didn’t occur to me to check on them, and Friday and I were busy with other things.”

That wasn’t a coincidence. “Have you called Clint?” She buttoned her jeans, and then sat to pull on socks. Nadja Rasmussen might always be smartly dressed for business, but she was traveling casual today.

“No answer. Friday checked the Compound, they aren’t there and Rhodey hasn’t seen or heard from either one.”

“Did you call Laura?” She pulled on her shoes, then pushed the wet hair off her face, before she dug her own phone out of the bag and turned it on. She waited to see if there were any messages—and none showed up.

Tabbing over to a browser, she typed in the web address for her shared email with Clint.

“Called, made up some excuse about holiday planning, but based on that strained conversation, I’m going to say no, he isn’t there.” Tony grunted. “Clint also doesn’t appear to have taken any tech with him…”

Steve had his clothes on and met her steady gaze at Tony’s second protracted silence.

Impatience crept through her as she stared at the inbox. Two unsent messages—both dated for when she’d been in Louisiana.

“But?” She prompted Tony.

“But…I installed a kill switch in Barnes’ arm, and I can probably track that. I’m already working on it.”

Steve’s expression didn’t betray outrage or surprise, only pained acceptance.

He knew.

“A kill switch.” Three words she managed to bite off. Irritation scraped away at her, but she had to bottle it. Assess. Analyze. Act. She needed more information.

“We discussed it in Switzerland,” Steve offered, and she schooled her expression. Clint and James were missing. It could be nothing. But Clint wouldn’t just skip out on an ankle monitor for a joy ride. So that meant it was something. James had left his phone. Which meant he’d intended to not be reached by them.

If someone had _taken_ them, Tony wouldn’t have said gone—he’d have said taken and he’d be a lot more pissed off instead of worried.

“Apparently more than discussion if Tony _installed_ a kill switch.” A kill switch in James. James who’d had every ounce of his agency usurped for years.

“Yeah, because some of us didn't trust him—and he didn’t trust himself,” Tony stated. Despite the position he’d taken, there wasn’t an ounce of defensiveness in his voice, but practical fact. “He was a threat to you…and to play fair, he made the offer first…”

The pragmatism should be more soothing than it was. “And you installed a kill switch…that’s still active.”

And had been.

“Red…”

“Angel…”

She stopped Steve with a look, and said, “Yes or no, you installed something in James that can _hurt_ him and you can _activate_  it whenever you want, _and_ it’s still _active_?”

Hands on his hips, Steve nodded slowly and Tony sighed, “Yes…and I’m working on converting it now so I can trace them—in the meanwhile, if you’d be so kind, I’d like the two of you back here so that when I find them, we can go get them together.”

“Was James cleared?”

There was a pause, and then Tony said, “Pardon is still in process but it’s all but done.”

“Then leave him alone.”

“Red—Clint isn’t in the clear.”

“Clint’s a big boy,” she reminded him. “If he went, he probably saw a reason for it and it was important.”

They’d been partners for too long for her to discount the possibility of a reason.

“But we don’t know why Bucky went,” Steve said slowly.

“Or if something triggered him, Red. Sorry, I’m going to pull executive rank on this one. Your boyfriend gave me permission here so I’m going to use it.” Then he added, “I’m sorry—we’ll talk soon okay?”

Then the call ended leaving she and Steve alone.

“You knew that Tony did that?” She had to confirm this.

“Yes, I was part of the discussion and for what it’s worth I said no. I didn’t want Bucky to do it, but Bucky insisted.”

To protect her.

Because he worried he was a real threat or because he didn’t think they would let him go if he hadn’t?

Turning away, she paced to the door and looked out at the misty morning. All the lazy heat and pleasure had evaporated like the steam rising off the water. It clouded everything.

“Angel,” Steve pressed against her back, hands light on her shoulders. “I should have told you.”

So that wasn’t the secret. That was something. “But—a lot of stuff happened.” It had been—a busy two weeks? Three weeks? She’d lost track. That was a problem. James let Tony install something in him that could cripple him or shut him down—she refused to think of “kill” switch being something that would kill him.

“Yeah.” But he didn’t sound like it was much of an excuse, which it wasn’t—even if she understood. Hadn’t she just avoided telling Steve something that would worry him? They hadn’t told her about this because it would worry her?

Or she’d have found a way to deactivate the damn thing already.

“Does Clint know?”

A long sigh.

“That’s a yes,” she muttered, then scrubbed her hands over her face. Something dark and cold turned over in her gut. So all four of them had known and conspired to do something stupid to protect her. “There were no messages on my phone—did you have any?”

Steve left her for a beat, and then said, “No. Just the call from Tony—doesn’t even look like Bucky read the message I sent last night.”

Probably not, he’d likely already been gone by then if he and Clint left before Tony made it back from Canada. Dammit, they should have gone back instead of staying in Niagara. She’d gotten greedy and now James…

“Nat…” Steve said slowly.

Staring at the Falls, the same sadness crawled up inside of her again. Her eyes burned. “He’ll be fine.” They couldn’t _contain_ him, it would make them no better than their handlers. What she’d said about Clint went for James, too. Could James be triggered? Maybe—and maybe that was why Clint went.

She trusted James. She had to trust him.

“Nat, Bucky…”

She turned, and faced him. “Don’t…whatever it is—if it’s the secret don’t tell me. He trusted _you_ with it.”

“Angel, he trusts you.”

Sure. That was fine. “But not with this. So don’t betray him…if you think you know where he went or why—then you go. You and Tony can go find him.”

She would give him what he seemed to need.

Or at least what he wanted…

“No,” Steve told her. “That’s not how this works—that’s not how any of this works.” He closed the distance between them and cupped her face. “Partners. Remember? You. Me. Him.”

She let out a shaky breath, then nodded. “I have to trust him though. I have…I won’t be a shackle. Between us, we’ve had too many of those.”

“Okay,” he conceded, then pressed his forehead to hers and gripped her hands. “But you don't get to blame yourself for anything…if Bucky wanted to go, us being there wouldn’t have stopped him.”

She knew that.

“I don’t…not fully and I don’t regret last night,” she promised him, because dammit… “This was really not how I planned for us to wake up this morning…”

“No?”

She shook her head a little. “Wake up sex is great.”

“Show me another time?” While his eyes were still dark with worry, his smile was genuine.

“It’s a date.”

But first…

“Okay,” he said, straightening and like her, he shed the personal for the professional. It was how they handled things when they had a job to do. “Let’s go find our boy.”

She laughed. “I’m going to tell him you called him that.”

It was going to be okay.

They would find James, and it would all be fine. They’d have a great laugh about it. Still, she glanced back at the falls and that cold, sad, and uneasy feeling swelled inside of her. No…it _had_ to be fine.

There was no other acceptable outcome.


	39. Fathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky reads Clint in to what he remembered...

**Chapter Thirty-Nine**

**Fathers**

**Clint**

 

 

Twenty-four hours later, to the minute, Barnes asked him to come to the roof. It was almost lunchtime and he’d finished today’s round of PT in record time. The therapist had gladly shown him the door. Clint got an almost perverse pleasure in the swiftness of the therapist’s exit. His own irritation at how long it was all taking left him in a sour mood. When he found Barnes waiting just outside, he’d almost snapped at him and then he remembered the twenty-four hour request and all his irritation vanished. Dressed in sweats, with one leg cut off to accommodate his brace, he made his way to the elevator.

To his credit, Barnes didn’t offer him an arm or aid, only holding the door open until Clint was inside. They rode up to the roof in silence. Once there, Barnes set one of the pair of thermoses he had on the table in front of Clint before cracking the other open and taking a drink.

It was some kind of protein shake with a coffee base. It should have tasted disgusting, because the smell made him think of a coffee shop, heady and strong. There was a nutty aftertaste, and it was thick, and cold—not at all appropriate for the damp autumn weather rapidly ceding its hold to real winter. Barnes wore a heavy jacket over sweats, and his hair was pulled away from his face in a ponytail. He’d shaved, and his right hand sported heavy bruises on his knuckles, but no blood.

Barnes smoked his way through two cigarettes before he started talking. Clint had been in this position with Nat before, when the struggled to unlock the vault was so real and visceral, he had to keep still lest they lose the thread of the combination and they had to start all over.

Life-altering. Barnes’ description had turned over in his head for the last twenty-four hours.

Life-altering.

_I’m…I’m happy._

Life-altering.

Nearing the half-way mark on the protein shake, he managed to shake off the fog of exhaustion physical therapy left behind, and kept his patience in check.

Finally… “I don’t know if I have the words,” Barnes admitted, toying with a third cigarette. He’d finished his whole thermos of protein shake like it had been a mission.

“Don’t pretty it up,” Clint advised. “Just rip it open. It might sting like hell… but that’s why I’m here. To patch it up if you can’t.”

The other man studied him for a long moment. “In 1972, Natalia and I fled the KGB and the Red Room.”

Not reacting to that kernel of information took every ounce of discipline he possessed.

“We had been partners again for a few months, maybe a year. When I came out of cryo, after the initial resetting, she was there and she welcomed me to the 70s. She knew me… and it took a few days, sometimes it took more than that… but she was patient. She woke me up, and then one night on into our current mission, I looked through the scope and knew her again. My Natalia.”

The lost haze surrounding the way he said the last, the reverence in the two words, were like a knife in the gut. He and Nat discussed not remembering, the loss of control over their own minds like Clint would basic training. Where the army broke him of all his bad habits, and reshaped him into a steady soldier. Only—they hadn’t stripped him of his personal identity by erasing him entirely.

Fucking bastards.

“It was always that way with us,” Barnes said, not looking at Clint, just smoking steadily and staring—at the past? Somewhere else? “If they wiped her, I would pull her around and when they woke me, she did the same. Most of it was instinct…even when they wiped us both, there was always a draw.”

Just like in Switzerland, from the moment the Soldier had seen her again or in Odessa, when Nat said she’d had a line of sight on him, when she could have shot him and she didn’t.

She couldn’t.

Swallowing bile with another mouthful of protein shake, Clint kept his jaw locked.

“We were lovers—we’d been lovers on and off since the early fifties.”

That didn’t surprise him, not based on everything he’d learned so far.

“We met in ’48, but it was nearly the end of ’50 before anything happened, and even then it wasn’t—roses or dates or dances—it was just pleasure. Quick moments in the dark that let us steal some humanity. Taking something back from the people who allowed us nothing.” Barnes shook his head. “The point is, in ’72, Natalia came to me and said she needed to go. That she was leaving. The information was treasonous, by all rights, I should have turned her in for reconditioning.”

“But you didn’t.” It wasn’t a question.

Barnes shook his head. “Never.” Then he snorted. “Not willingly anyway…it didn’t matter because she just asked me to come with her. Told me she couldn’t risk staying, but she didn’t want to leave me. It wasn’t even a choice, Natalia was in danger, she said she had to go before they found out, before they discovered…” The other man blew out a shuddering breath, then met Clint’s gaze. “Before our handlers learned she’d become pregnant.”

Shock rippled through him. Clint blinked once. Then again. “Nat…Nat said she can’t get pregnant.” Sterilized. It was a horrible little word. An admission one long night of drinking. She didn’t even mention it during her SHIELD debrief. The experiments, the humiliation, the training, and the mind wipes, yes—the sterilization? No. That she’d confided in Clint privately, over many many drinks.

“They sterilized her,” Barnes said slowly. “That much is true. It was part of her graduation ceremony. Madame B moving her from Petrovitch’s playing board to her own.” The bleak statements were empty of emotion. Hating people who were already dead was a fool’s effort, Clint would cheerfully dig them up and burn their fucking bones. “She was still recovering from that procedure when she first began to train with me. There was stiffness to her side, and a faint scar along her abdomen that vanished in a few weeks. I don't know what procedure they used, and we never discussed it. It wasn't...fuck it wasn't relevant.”

In ’48, and some 24 years later she got pregnant.

“She healed,” Clint said. “It took her time, but she healed. Somehow.” She must have. Any other alternative, like they tampered with her again, was far too fucking horrible to contemplate and yet at some point, they may have to look closer at it.

“I don’t know,” Barnes admitted, lighting a fourth cigarette. The guy’s hand shook or Clint would criticize the habit. At the moment, he was considering where Tony kept the good liquor stashed. “I just know she got pregnant, and she figured it out before they did. It was paramount to her that our child _not_ be born there and that they _not_ know about it.”

Considering the fucking monsters they worked for… “The Russian bastards—Leonid and Alexei…they said that was what Petrovitch wanted from her, to use her like some kind of broodmare.”

One sharp nod.

“Fuck,” Clint exhaled the word.

“Yeah,” Barnes said glancing at him, eyes icy but haunted. Barely restrained rage burned beneath the frost in his gaze. “She didn’t want them to have our child…she knew exactly what they would do and she took a horrible risk in even telling me she was going to go.”

“But she wasn’t leaving you behind.” Nat wouldn’t have done that. Not if she cared, which she clearly had.

“No,” Barnes admitted. “She made all of the plans, we vanished in the window time allotted to us following a mission to return to base. Sometimes we pushed it, taking an extra day here or there. Our handlers rarely questioned it because we always got the job done. It gave us a three day window in which to vanish. We traveled under various IDs from Russia to Egypt to Spain to France to Canada…” His expression shifted again. “In Canada we lingered, she had to construct new IDs, and we purchased a car. Then we drove across the border under American IDs and made our way west. I remember—some of the details, they are clear. I can see the car, smell the cracked leather. It was a big, brown Ford sedan. Older model, cheap. We dumped it in Chicago and took a truck. Kept going…”

Clint set the empty thermos aside after draining all of it and leaned forward. He almost wanted to press fast-forward, because somewhere along the way they’d lost this kid.

Nat didn’t have a kid.

Nat fucking adored his children, and she was tighter with Lila than Coop, but she loved them all.

She wouldn’t have left her kid and she wouldn’t pretend that kid didn’t exist… Okay, she might pretend if it protected her daughter. But Clint didn't think she'd have kept that secret from him. Not after all this time. If she knew, if she'd remembered...she would have done something. 

Swallowing back the burn of bile with the last of the protein drink he listened.

“I was more Soldier then than Bucky or James…she always woke me beneath it all, but it was like emerging slowly from beneath deep water. The Soldier’s only concerns were keeping her safe, and where she led, he would follow. She talked about a place in the mountains, remote areas of the U.S. where they wouldn’t find us…”

“West,” Clint said. “Colorado, Montana or Wyoming.”

Barnes smiled faintly. “You know Natalia well.”

Yeah, he did. “Makes sense. Harsher environments, lower populations. There are still places out there you can build a cabin and not see anyone for months unless you make an effort. Perfect for a safe house.”

Barnes’ gaze sharpened on him. “I can see the cabin we had. We purchased the land, and it had a little place, we fixed it up, built it out. I added a stone fireplace, and we were entrenched before the first snows…we were Jason and Nancy all the way there, but for a few months, while the snow fell deep, we were just us.” The wistfulness in his tone left Clint hurting.

Fuck this was not going to end well. He’d had that thought before, watching Barnes and Rogers circle Nat, both of them wanting her and even Stark, right there on the periphery patiently waiting. But that was nothing compared to this. He knew the fall was coming and no amount of bracing would make this easy for her… “She doesn’t know.”

It wasn’t a question.

Barnes shook his head. “I don’t think so. You were there when she mentioned being sterilized in Switzerland after we saw the tape of her graduation fights. We heard Alexei and Leonid’s protests of what she was supposed to be.” He spat out the pair’s names like they left a foul taste in his mouth. Which, they probably did.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Clint packed away his own rapidly unfolding anger. His ability to empathize wasn’t why Barnes was here. “So you went west, built a cabin… and?”

“And Natalia was pregnant, I hunted, and guarded, and we kept to ourselves and she grew more beautiful every day.” The wistfulness in his cool tones would likely haunt Clint’s nightmares. With every word, it punched through him watching Laura with Cooper, then Lila, and eventually Nate. He’d missed some of her pregnancies, but he’d also been able to savor them. To cheer her on, to know she was safe and that their kids would be born into a happy, and secure environment. He did everything he could to ensure this.

He would always do everything he could to make sure they had it.

“I read books that she’d found on our way west, and she read them...” Barnes released a humorless laugh. “Neither of us really understood pregnancy, looking back…some of it seemed familiar. I remember my ma being pregnant with my sisters now, but I was a kid. I knew it was guys who knocked up the gals. But when Natalia was pregnant… it was all just some experience I had never trained for.”

Another slow shake of his head, and he tapped out another smoke, his hand shaking so bad he fumbled and crushed it. Clint rose and made his way over carefully, then pulled out a cigarette for him, before he took the lighter and lit the tip for him and after he sat next to him.

They weren’t close.

They were barely qualified as friends.

But fuck it, he was Nat’s and that made him family.

“What happened?” And please for the love of God don’t tell him that baby died when these two trained assassins hidden from the world had to deliver the kid. No way they went to a doctor or a medical facility.

“She was born.”

She.

Clint closed his eyes and steeled himself.

“Beautiful little girl,” Barnes admitted. “I can see her—ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes…beautiful green eyes, just like her mother, and reddish-brown curls, she had almost a full head of hair. Natalia said her hair was dark, like mine, but I knew those curls would turn red like hers. Perfect little baby…” He exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Delivery was hard on Natalia, she lost a lot of blood and I only knew the basics from the medical book I stole from the doctor’s office in Missouri…cut the cord, clean off the mess, and pat the back to get the fluid out of the baby’s lungs. But there was more to do—passing the placenta, I didn’t get what that meant, Natalia figured it out.”

Having witnessed the birth of two of his three kids—fuck, Nat had been there for Lila. The look of absolute blissful wonder on her face when Clint arrived to find her cradling the newborn. He didn’t have to try and imagine how she’d been with her own.

“Anyway,” Barnes said, shaking it off. “We had a few months with her…a few months before they tracked us down. We made a mistake. We stayed in the cabin, we trusted our anonymity. But there were times when I had to travel to pick up things we needed. Babies need more than just what I could hunt even if Natalia and I could make do, and she breast fed…eventually … eventually the KGB and Red Room sent full squads to bring us back. I sent them away from me, told Natalia to take Mary and go.”

Mary.

“She didn’t want to leave me but we couldn’t risk them taking Mary. Couldn’t risk them even knowing Mary was alive. We’d always hidden the evidence of Mary in the cabin, like we knew it was important no evidence remained if we had to leave suddenly. We didn’t have an actual crib, we used a drawer from the dresser, we modified a chair to keep her next to our bed if she wasn’t sleeping with us.”

The fierceness tangled with melancholy cut at Clint.

“We always kept go bags, including one for Mary—training didn’t fail us everywhere. No pictures, no personal items, and knowing they were coming, I armed up while she stripped what little marked Mary’s existence before she bundled her to her chest, took the go bags and vanished.” Barnes stared across the roof toward the city. “I killed my way through the squads, hunting them, drawing them south and away from the path Natalia would have taken. We’d both mapped exit routes—and we never told the other what they were.”

Son. Of. A. Bitch. Of course they hadn’t, they’d planned for everything including being used against each other.

“I bought them all the time I could.” A faint smile. “Even when they managed to bring me down, they still had to get me back—plenty of time to keep killing them.”

And he would have, because Clint would have done the same. “Fight. Kill. Rebel. Hope they kill you before you got where they were going.”

A single nod.

Because death would guarantee he couldn’t betray Nat.

But that didn’t happen… “I didn’t betray her though—I know what they wanted but I made it so fucking hard on them they had no choice. They shoved my ass in the chair, bloody, and wounded, and wiped me. It took me an hour to shake it off and I killed the technicians.”

“So they did it again.”

“And again,” Barnes admitted. “At some point, they finally managed to cage Bucky completely and neutered the Soldier until we were just a cell.” Another dead cigarette butt crushed between his metal fingers and Clint tapped out another one. They really needed all the liquor for this.

All of it.

“Eventually—I was ready to comply.” Something died in his voice.

“They sent you after Nat.”

“They’re predictable, aren’t they?” He said with a mirthless smile. “But Natalia was— _is_ brilliant. It took me months to find her, almost a year. This was months after they’d taken me, it took them time to break me again.” His mouth twisted. “And I didn’t find her until she let me. I don’t know if it was because she wanted me to find her or if it was the only way to hide Mary…but when the team assigned to me and I tracked her to the Amalfi Coast, she was waiting—she killed every single one of them.”

He bowed his head, and shook it slowly.

“But not me.”

Tears clouded his voice and Clint had to blink back a burn of them. Guilt and pain lay like heavy chains all over the other man.

“She lowered her weapon—just like she did in Odessa.” Self-loathing crept into the words. “She called me Soldat…and she stared into my eyes and I know now why. She was looking for some trace of me they’d left behind, any part of it…but I wasn’t there, just the mission and I was buried so deep—and she was my mission.”

Clint didn’t want to know, but Barnes plowed on.

“They’d ordered me to break her if I had to. Break her and bring her back. She was the Black Widow. She would not comply, not without conditioning…so I broke her legs, and then her arms. She didn’t fight me. I didn’t _have_ to do it, but—”

“Orders.” Orders they weren’t allowed to disobey. Orders that probably had taken everything they had to flout to run in the first place.

“Yeah.” Barnes shoved away from the low wall he’d been sitting on and paced across the roof. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I took her back, kept her broken. She never said a word—except to tell me it was okay. Even when she woke up in pain because her bones had begun to set and I had to rebreak them—it was always ‘it’s okay…’”

Barnes shook his head. “In Budapest,” he said slowly. “I delivered her as requested, and Karpov was there to supervise.”

Budapest.

The Widow Trap.

Fuck…

“They had me put her in the chair, they didn’t have time for anymore rebellions and they’d learned their lesson with me. She looked right at me….and said it was okay…again…then they threw the switch and wiped all that fire from her eyes.”

Then Barnes laughed, and it was a wet sound.

“She won,” he said, turning to look at him. “She came back, and they wiped her without ever asking a question.”

“She protected your daughter,” Clint said. It had never been a question. Nat—Nat was an unstoppable force. The day she decided they wouldn’t stop, she would have begun planning. Hell, she probably had been on her way away from Barnes in the first place. Clint would bet money she let him find her so she could rescue him, too.

But that hadn’t worked out for her…so she’d done the next best thing, she’d let him take her back because she wouldn’t hurt him and she put herself as far away from their child as possible.

With her healing ability—yeah, she’d probably repaired any lingering signs from the pregnancy. He said months after their daughter was born, and a year after they’d taken him, so it had to be ’74? ’75? when she went back.

“Okay…” Fuck that was a lot. “So, you took her back, they wiped her and then what… ?”

“Then they put us back to work…we were compliant. It wasn’t long before we were paired again. We were the perfect assets and…” Barnes shrugged.

“And as soon as you spent any time with each other again, you gravitated right back to each other.” So no matter how they were wiped, the bastards couldn’t remove that piece.

“More or less, I think they began wiping me more often than before. Before I would be out of cryo—sometimes three years before they decided I needed a reset. Natalia—Karpov put Natalia through the chair more. At least until Natalia gutted the son of a bitch.” There was that pride again. “He wanted to own her and she never let that happen. But after—after we’d been gone, that changed. Then in ’84, the fact we were lovers again was discovered and…they wiped us both. I was put back into cryo and Natalia left…I don’t know all of that story, I didn’t see her again until Odessa….Hydra had me by ’89, full time, and they never let me out of cryo except to do missions, and that meant they wiped me repeatedly.”

Barnes went quiet and Clint gave him some time. That was a lot… Finally, he said, “And you still haven’t mentioned any of this to Nat?”

“How the hell am I supposed to tell her that?” Not an unfair question. Barnes fished out another cigarette, the last in his pack and he lit it before crushing the pack and then policed all his butts and trash, and disposed of them. Looking out at the city, he said, “I wasn’t even sure how much of it was true and how much of it was a fanciful dream I had in cryo or maybe they’d programmed me with.”

“Why would they give you something like that in programming?”

A shrug. “To teach me nothing lasts forever, punishment comes in all shapes and sizes.”

Yeah, Clint didn’t want to know how likely any of that happened. “So this is what you needed to verify?”

A single nod.

“And you’ve verified it now?” He had proof?

Barnes dug a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a couple of folded pieces of paper. He passed it over and Clint stared at him a beat before he straightened the sheets out. They were printouts of a newspaper called Crazy News, it didn’t seem like a real thing but then it listed itself as the all the news the Crazy Mountains offer for print.

Crazy Mountains.

Montana.

The first article was about a harvest festival held the previous weekend, and the turnout of folks from three different counties and the prize cow that had won best in show. Another article on expected winter snowfall. And then a third article listed new state laws going into effect on November 1st. The articles were less than helpful, and the image in the center was indistinct, at least printed this way, but the second page had the image blown up and in the background, near the very edge of the photo was Nat—with long braids framing her face and looking perilously young even in grainy black and white. There was a figure just behind her, his face turned away but Clint could see the similarities to Barnes in the profile.

“It’s from 1972, mid-October…the timing would be right for when we would have arrived. She would have been about three months along.”

And with Nat’s build—“Probably not showing.”

“No, there was the faintest of bumps, but she covered it with clothing. You couldn’t tell. She didn’t gain much weight, even when she did begin to show.” Another shrug. “It could have been her physiology.”

Or the serum.

They didn’t have to say that.

Barnes had the serum too. Fuck…a kid from the two of them, who wouldn’t have turned the world over to find that baby?

“And it was a girl?”

A faint smile flickered across Barnes’ face. “Mary Elizabeth. A very solid American-Irish name.”

“Fuck man, I’m sorry.” Clint couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to. If someone had been coming after Laura and Lila—he’d have burned the damn world down. There was a reason he kept his family life utterly compartmentalized—or had.

“She doesn’t deserve this,” Barnes said, finally sitting again. “How do I tell Natalia she had a child, but I have no idea where the child is?”

“I don’t know—with the truth. It’s going to hurt man, just like it’s hurting you.”

Barnes waved him off. “It’s—I’m fine. This isn’t about me.”

“The fuck it isn’t,” Clint told him baldly. “That little girl is your child, too. Nat may not remember, but you do. You gave up everything to get them out, and you don’t have any other answers at the moment. You have a right to feel this, she isn’t the only one who’s lost.”

At least Nat had the small mercy of not knowing what she’d lost.

“I have the right to nothing. I put her back in that chair—I got her pregnant in the first damn place, but I put her back in that chair. I broke her, and I put…” Tears snapped in his voice and Clint blew out a breath.

“Shut up.”

Barnes turned a hard glare at him and Clint met him hard stare for stare.

“You heard me. Shut up. No one makes Nat do a fucking thing she doesn’t want to do. You were right when you said she had to let you find her. She did that because she wanted you back…she went back for you. Which meant you had to be worth it for her. She let you take her because it was the only way to stay close to you and put herself far away from her daughter. The one person you both sacrificed everything to protect—even having her in your lives.” No question existed within him. “So shut up that you don’t have a right to grieve. Fathers love their kids, we don’t give birth to them, but that doesn’t make us any less invested. We sacrifice everything for _them_ , that’s our _job_. You didn’t hesitate. She needed to get out, you got out with her. She needed someone to watch her back, you were there. When they came for all of you, you got her out again and gave up yourself—over and over. If Nat went back it was because Nat _chose_ to do it.”

Rising, Clint limped away from him. It was his turn to pace.

“And you weren’t wrong, she pushed all of you to wipe her. To remove anything that would betray her child.” Nat had to have hidden her, found a place to put her with people she trusted would do right by her and then she’d vanished back into legend. The Winter Soldier might have been a myth, but the Black Widow was a legend. He’d heard stories about her long before they’d put him on her trail.

She was the one who told him about the Winter Soldier.

“Nat had to go back,” he said slowly. “Once you were gone, and it was just her—she knew they would send you. So she had to control the situation. So no, you didn’t do that to her, Barnes. You’re a dad who just remembered he had a kid—one you lost every bit as much as she did.”

“We don’t know if she’s dead,” he argued.

“We do know she isn’t a baby anymore…” Kid born in ’73? Would be in her forties now. Not a child at all. A grown woman with a heritage she had no idea about, and…and maybe even abilities she didn’t know. What a cluster fuck. “So yeah, I’m sorry. If it were me and Lila…” He’d never stop. It wouldn’t matter how old she was or Coop or Nate. He wouldn’t stop. “What do you need?”

“I need to go there.” Barnes said, motioning to the newspaper. “I need to find the cabin. That’s one image…I need the rest. I need absolute proof before I tell Natalia because she _doesn’t_ remember. And the last time she tried to force her memories, she slipped into a coma.”

Why the fuck could Barnes put the pieces together and she couldn’t? As similar as they were, there were some glaring differences.

“Montana, huh?” He looked down at the paper, then at his anklet. “I’m guessing you don’t plan on telling Nat.”

She was going to kill him.

“She and Steve are heading to Canada—I have a few days. I can go and do this and be back before they know I’m gone.”

“You’re not going alone.” He rubbed his hip carefully and shifted his stance. “Give me an hour. I’ll get the anklet off, and we’ll make plans. I’ve got a couple of safe houses out west, and we can take the quinjet.” It was parked at the Tower. “Get some maps of the region—you have a rough idea where the cabin should be?”

“I have the land records,” Barnes surprised him. “It’s still in our names. The land hasn’t been sold.”

That surprised him… “That means the cabin might still be there.” Unless… “If they tracked you to it, couldn’t the squads have already raided it?”

“They were down to four men when they took me. They didn’t have time.”

Four men.

“Were there any news articles about a massacre?”

Barnes shook his head slowly.

“Someone covered it up,” Clint said. “Them or…”

“Natalia or someone else. Or maybe no one found the bodies and they are just bones and dust on that mountain.” There was a kind of grim satisfaction in his voice.

Clint couldn’t blame him for that. “Okay. Go wash up and pack light, then meet me on my floor.”

“Barton…I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You’re not.” He was almost to the elevator when Barnes caught up to him.

“You’re on house arrest…and your leg…”

“Not my first rodeo, Sergeant. The anklet is a nuisance and the leg is healing…besides…I don’t need the leg to shoot a gun.” Even if he wasn’t quite up to his bow yet. “And we’re hunting the past not bad guys.”

Inside the elevator, they said nothing. Until… “I didn’t know if I wanted it to be true,” Barnes admitted.

The doors opened to Clint’s floor and he spared the other guy a pat on his shoulder. “And now?”

He met his gaze. “Now I want to find her. Just to know she made it.”

“That’s what dads do,” he told him. “No matter what it takes.”

“No matter what it takes,” Barnes echoed. “Then I have to tell Natalia.”

He was going to have to tell her sooner or later regardless, but Clint nodded. “Back here in a hour with your gear.” Then he flicked a brief glance at the ceiling.

“Friday,” Barnes said.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes…”

“Are all of my conversations still locked to my voice print only and erased within the hour?”

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes.”

Interesting. “Good thinking,” Clint told him.

“As you said,” Barnes gave him a faint smile. “Not my first rodeo.”

Once alone, Clint debated his next steps. He had an old slicer of Nat’s, he could use that to deactivate the anklet, then reset it. It would continue to transmit that he was here, but it wouldn’t report the removal. That was the easy part.

Montana. They could take the Tower quinjet, but Tony could track that. So a private flight would be better.

Who did he know with a small plane?

A couple of names came to mind.

They’d need gear, ids, and cash.

That would take a little bit longer to get, but totally doable.

In his room, he stripped off his workout gear and ignored the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to them. Barnes needed some answers before he turned into an actual chimney.

Nat had a kid.

Clint sat on the edge of the bed and blew out a breath.

She had a kid.

Just when he thought the bastards who’d controlled her for so long couldn’t take anything else from her—she had a kid.

They could verify a lot of this, put Barnes’ mind at ease that he was on the path to the truth—but they weren’t finding their daughter without Nat. Of that he had no doubt…

Mary Elizabeth.

It was a pretty name.

“Friday, voice activated mode in here only please.”

“Of course, Agent Barton.” The AI wouldn’t monitor him or his activities until he asked for her or twenty-four hours passed, whichever came first.

Palming his phone, he flipped it to the photos stored there. He stared at his kids and exhaled. After setting his phone down, he pulled out a burner, then called Laura… she answered on the first ring.

“Are you all right?” The breathless greeting caught him off guard, then she said, “You weren’t supposed to call until the weekend.”

“I know…just needed to hear you and the kids were okay.” More than she knew. He couldn’t shake the mental picture Barnes painted for him. He couldn’t imagine being in Barnes’ shoes—his whole world kept swinging around and shifting, the landscape changing right beneath his feet.

“We’re fine,” Laura said slowly. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he admitted, but it wasn’t his secret to tell. “Not really.”

“Can you talk about it?” His wife knew him well.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Okay.”

“Laur…”

“They’re fine Clint. Cooper’s trying out for the baseball team this spring, and he’s still interested in hockey this winter. I told him he could play in one of the recreation leagues, at least for hockey—not sure I’m ready to see him body slamming other kids.” There was a chiding note in her voice and he smiled. “Lila’s working on her lines for their pageant, and she’s really throwing herself into her dance lessons, but I caught her playing with one of your old bows a couple of days ago. You may have to teach her sooner rather than later.”

That was an old argument. Lila had asked him once if he’d teach her to use a bow and arrow, and he always said he would—but later. He wasn’t ready to have to teach his little girl to fight. He didn’t think he’d ever be ready for it…

_I sent them away from me, told Natalia to take Mary and go._

“I’ll order one for her more her size this Christmas,” he told her. “I can start her lessons when you guys come for the holidays.”

“I think she’d like that…”

“Hey Laura?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not a terrible dad, am I?” He was gone so much.

“No Clint,” she promised him. “You’re not…the kids love you and they know you love them… They're also very proud of their father.”

He kept Laura on the phone for another ten minutes, talking about everything and nothing, even just listening to Nate babble in the background. Then when they hung up, he went to work on removing the anklet. It took him a couple of minutes longer than he thought it would. But he secured it so it would keep transmitting, then packed some gear. He managed a sketchy shower, thanks to a shower chair. He removed the brace only long enough to wash his leg, and then replaced it after he dried.

Dressed in another pair of jeans with one leg cut off, he was ready when Barnes appeared on his floor, a duffle bag in hand. There was light and then there was on the run. But Clint didn’t comment as he waved him inside.

“I have a plan…”

Barnes nodded. “I’m listening…”


	40. Imperfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Bucky find the cabin in Montana...

**Chapter Forty**

**Imperfect**

**Bucky**

 

 

James kept the plane level as he angled toward the runway. White Sulphur Springs airport was a tiny dot on the landscape with runway lights that looked more like fairy lanterns than actual runway, and the former military turned private airport didn’t ask them a lot of questions. Arrangements had been made ahead of time. Apparently when Clint said he had a plan it involved a guy he knew who knew another guy. That guy apparently owned a small plane, one James recognized how to fly from the moment he sat behind the controls. He was flight rated on a lot of models.

They hadn’t talked much on the way, Clint asked the occasional question, and otherwise he spent his time researching information on his phone. “This is a really fucking small place,” Clint commented as they taxied toward the hanger they’d been assigned to. He’d made payment arrangements for maintenance, and refueling. The amount suggested it also paid for quiet, too.

“The county seat has a population of under a thousand now,” James told him as he parked the plane, and went through the shutdown process. “It was only about twelve hundred when we got here. Small was good, yes, we’d stand out but we never went into town together—and after Natalia began to show, she didn’t go at all.”

Clint moved stiffly as they deplaned and he leaned more heavily on his cane. Studying the darkened and quiet airport around them, he shook his head. “There’s no one even here to check us in.”

“That’s a good thing,” James reminded him. “Every transaction handled at a distance is one less you have to worry about betraying us.”

The other man shrugged. “When I said there were places out here you could fall off the map, I meant it. How the hell did the two of you find this place back then?”

A grin pulled at his cheeks as pride swelled in his chest. “Natalia. She spent three days looking through periodicals in a library, she studied maps, census reports—everything she could get her hands on.” She had the patience for that kind of relentless study. If it had been up to him, he would have pointed to a spot on the map as far from any listed populace as possible.

Snow lay like a shroud across the earth, snowfall in the region began in mid October and lasted until the end of April, beginning of May. They’d been deep into winter from their arrival. Blowing out his breath, he watched it steam in a puffy little cloud and shook his head. They were used to such cold climes, but they’d chosen the region and the mountains specifically because of the isolation provided not only by the geography but by the weather.

“Sounds like her.” Clint commented as he stretched with a grimace. “You people and your cold weather blood.” The complaint didn’t stop him from grabbing for his bag, but James took it and shouldered it along with his own.

At Clint’s glare, he said, “You focus on walking—I’m not carrying you, too.” He would if he had to, but the barb would be more welcome than the sympathy.

Hardly mollified, the other man motioned toward a jeep. “That’s ours. Key under the wheel well, rear passenger.”

Ten minutes later, James drove them out of the airport. They still hadn’t seen a soul. That satisfied him enormously, while snow decorated the land, and some of it drifted onto the roads, they were relatively dry. “You have as many contacts as Natalia.”

“No one has as many contacts as she does,” Clint said, adjusting his seat. It was late, even with the time change. It had been a seven-hour flight, including one brief stop to refuel the smaller plane. The distance from the airport to where the cabin should be was another couple of hours by car, roughly ninety minutes from the town proper, tucked away on the edges of Federal land.

“How did you hunt her?” That nagged at him. The tale of how Clint had brought her in. Natalia…how had he found her then?

“Followed her targets. She had a certain style. High profile targets would go down, most of them died of so-called natural causes. Occasionally, there’d be a secondary body drop—this one a lot messier, and often related to some kind of human trafficking…the year I caught up to her, four rapists went down in as many weeks in two countries near the next political target that seemed to match the profile of marks.” Clint discussed it with the same level of normalcy one would use if used to hunting difficult targets. “Never had a problem with the scum bags she took out—and they were always killed like they were a warning to others. Didn’t put the thread of human trafficking and abuse together at first, that came later…but looking back? Most of the people she killed fucking deserved it. At least then.”

“Not all of them or she wouldn’t have been on SHIELD’s radar.” Or had it been Alexander Pierce’s radar she’d gotten on?

Another shrug. “Fair. Still…she let me find her. No way she didn’t know I was hunting her. We’re both pretty evenly matched, or so I like to think most days. But I got to know her—through her kills, how she handled herself and there were a couple of times she got eyes on me—“ Clint laughed and shook his head. “Fucking thing was…she bought me a drink two days before I caught up to her. She never confirmed this, but I think it was an audition to see whether I was worth her time or not.”

That sounded like Natalia. Was the person hunting her good enough to take her out and if they were, did she want to take them out first? Only, she hadn’t taken him out…

“She was tired,” Clint said, sobering. “I’ve never seen the kind of tired that I found her eyes that night. She was unarmed, all of her weapons were well out of reach, she wasn’t wearing any armor or suit, and she didn’t even try to seduce me—all she said was get on with it, and she didn’t even look up. She was ready to die that night.”

James’ heart sank.

“I think,” Clint said then hesitated. In the darkened interior, his expression was difficult to read. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he finally said, “I think she was just done. Done with the whole thing, and I was her ticket out.”

“But you didn’t kill her.” Never had James been more grateful for the man sitting next to him. Focusing on this let him pull his thoughts away from their destination and what it meant.

“Nope. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to, and wouldn’t. Instead, I made her a job offer instead and she took me up on it.”

“And your bosses just went for it?” They were on a state highway now, and it was like driving through a dark, snowy bubble.

“Nah, they threatened to toss my ass in the cell next to hers,” Clint said, an unrepentant grin on his face. “But they needed me, and my skills, and Phil—Phil took my side in it. That helped. Eventually, she did exactly what I thought she would. She proved how valuable she could be.”

“They used her like a new weapon in their arsenal.” Coldness infused the words, and he didn’t miss Clint’s flinch.

“She was never just a weapon to me.”

No, she wasn’t. Another reason he liked the man. “But SHIELD was ultimately under Alexander Pierce…”

“Eventually…” Clint admitted.

The bastard that ran him had run her too. Their lives had been tangled together for decades. The knots hid other knots, always binding them together.

“How did you two end up together?” The blunt nature of the question didn’t surprise him, but it acted like a spark of amusement against the dark tangle knotting his guts.

“How long have you been waiting to ask that question?” He flicked a glance toward the road sign they passed. Another hour, easily. Then it was a hike. There was no road directly up to the cabin. He’d always parked a half-mile away, and hiked in. The cabin itself had been much older, and came with a generator—one he’d updated before the snow buried them.

“Odessa probably—but the only question I really wanted the answer to then was  how was I going to kill you.” Again with the blunt honesty. James appreciated it. Even if the memory he conjured sent a flash fire of pain through his gut.

Following the target. They were good. They avoided major thoroughfares and kept to the back roads. Harder to find a sniper’s perch. Too many places where he would be visible.

An estimate of the destination. Choosing a place ahead of the route, and shooting out the tires. It wasn’t ideal, but it sent the vehicle careening over a cliff. He followed up, because without a body there was no proof he’d finished the task. The scientist’s extraction to the west was unacceptable. He had access to too much information. In the time it took him to descend to just above the crash site, movement alerted him to his target’s likely survival.

Then she was there, a weapon in hand pointed directly at him. His was still lowered. A space of three seconds, one full double beat of his heart. One squeeze of the trigger would have ended him, but those green eyes held some kind of recognition and it sparked a similarly unfamiliar sensation within the Soldier.

She moved to block his shot; the engineer was on his knees behind her. His head nearly level with her abdomen. Soft tissue, avoidance of vital organs—he fixed a look on her and waited. Her gun wavered, a minute motion but present and then it lowered a fraction.

She wouldn’t shoot him.

He didn’t want to kill her.

He fired.

The bullet sliced clean through her, and the engineer’s head exploded behind, bone and brain matter spattering the rock. Her blood began to pool as he slid down another three steps to where she stared up at him. Patting her down, he found a device inside the tact jacket.

A recall button.

He’d seen them before. It was a panic alert for when emergency extraction was required.

After pressing it, he slid it back into the pocket and then checked on his target. Kill verified.

The Soldier stared down at the slowly closing green eyes. The pulse shocked his system. The blood spread around her in a slow pool, but he fastened her hand against the entrance wound and pressed down, then bunched her jacket against the exit wound. It wasn’t ideal, but it would buy her precious more seconds.

Time to…time to heal.

Then the Soldier stood. He didn’t want to leave but the mission had been completed and it was time to go.

He withdrew to one hundred yards and waited.

When the sound of a vehicle in rapid approached reached him, he gave it the time to get to her, and only when he saw the man leap out to run to her did he withdraw fully.

Mission complete.

Bile burned along the back of his throat.

“She told me about you,” Clint said, his tone even. “After she woke up in the field hospital. Told me she recognized you—we didn’t put it in the reports, and I buried it—it was enough that she’d been wounded, she didn’t need to try and explain her strange recognition of a myth no one could prove existed.”

His mouth twisting, James nodded. “Not revealing it probably kept her alive.” Pierce would have eliminated her—or sent him to reacquire her. The Winter Soldier couldn’t exist on any intelligence community radar. He was a ghost. A phantom.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Clint admitted. “At the time, I thought she might have imagined it or maybe she did actually recognize you and she’d betrayed SHIELD in her hesitation. But I think a gut shot was enough punishment.”

True.

“And you haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t plan on answering your question,” he told him. “What is between Natalia and I is between us.” He’d admitted to her pregnancy, fuck—the idea left him dizzy even if he could see her. The silhouette of her standing at the window looking out at the snow, and the gentle swell of her abdomen softening her image. The way she’d catch his hand and place it flat against her stomach when the baby moved. The first flutters of a kick, and the wonder of realizing the little person she formed came from both of them.

No, some of those memories were meant for no one other than the woman who shared them with him.

“You said a couple of years after you met her—that would have made her what, twenty?”

Apparently Clint wasn’t letting this go. James sighed, then nodded. “Age didn’t matter.” It had been a number he didn’t track, not anymore. By then he would have been…thirty-two? Thirty-three? And she was twenty. Younger than even his youngest sister by then. Pain flared at that memory, but she’d been his perfect complement. They worked beautifully together.

“I guess not,” Clint said with a sigh. “You know I call her kid, sometimes.”

“She’s older than you are.”

“I know.” The other man shrugged. “But sometimes she seems so much younger than I am.”

That didn’t sound right. If anything, Natalia’s balanced demeanor gave her an ethereal air. “Did you need to look at her as younger to excuse the choices she’d made?”

“No,” Clint admitted. “Not really. I wasn’t kidding when I said the fact she was waiting for me to kill her changed my mind about doing it. No one should ever be so lost and isolated death seems the better option. But there are just—there are places where she is naïve about people.”

James snorted. “Natalia knows people. She reads them.”

“But that doesn’t mean she can’t be naïve. She wants to trust. She wants to be a part of something…but she uses what she knows of the people around her to keep herself at a distance. Very few get past her defenses. Even fewer can stay there.”

Many uncomfortable elements inhabited that truth.

“It occurs to me whether she remembered you or not—the feeling of belonging and having that ripped away repeatedly wouldn’t go away just because they wiped her brain.” The observation pushed slivers of bamboo beneath his skin. “The feeling of knowing you wouldn’t go away, it’s why she didn’t want to kill you.”

It stopped her in Odessa, but not in DC.

Steve was in DC though. He’d attacked her, Steve, and Sam. She’d pulled him away from Steve, or at least that had been her intention. But she hadn’t known she was the target. She’d also shot him in the face—if not for the goggles, he would be dead. So she’d gotten over that hang up.

Or pushed past it.

“So you think I’m the reason she’s not allowed herself to be a part of anything…” The conversation was pulling him in circles, and aggravated him.

“The whole reason? Hell no. She’s mentioned enough about the Red Room for me to understand any chance she had at normalizing relations would always be compromised. But I do think that this _knowing_ she had with you…it made it easier for her to push away from chances at something more.”

James frowned. It was bad enough they were driving toward the relic of his shared past with her that would confirm his memory once and for all, but… “Is there a point, Barton?” Natalia was his everything and Barton might be her friend and ally, he might even be Natalia’s family—but James had known her for sixty plus years and even with their long absences, nothing would change how he felt about her.

Nothing.

“Yeah, the point is to get you feeling again. You’re sitting over there shutting it all down and you can’t do that.” The answer added a fresh abrasion to his already irritated mood.

“The hell are you talking about?” He had to fight to keep his grip on the steering wheel even. He did not want to rip it off and he removed his left hand to try and limit the possibility.

“You told me you have a kid. You’re telling yourself Nat’s feelings are way more important than your own. You’re shouldering the responsibility for what happened to her after, and you’re so wholly focused on making this right for her, you’re not letting yourself feel what should be a gut wrenching fucking loss.”

“Speaking from experience?” It came out far harsher than he attended but Clint had no business telling him how to feel.

“Yeah. Because I know what it’s like to be away from my kids, to know I might not get to see them…”

“But you made your own choices,” James countered. “You didn’t have to come to Germany, but you walked away from your family to help Steve—even against Natalia. So your family wasn’t _taken_ from you. You walked away.”

“So. Did. You.”

James slammed on the brakes and had to fight keep the jeep from spinning off the road. They slid fifty feet before it finally stopped. Throwing it into park, he shoved out the door and stomped off into the snow.

It was that or shove Barton out the other door.

_Your family wasn’t taken from you. You walked away._

_So. Did. You._

He stared across the darkened landscape; pain an old familiar companion turning his blood to razors.

He’d walked away from his family to protect them.

He’d drawn the hunters away from them.

_But it was still me…_

“So you do love them,” Barton said into the quiet. James didn’t turn around to look at him. Not when he could imagine punching him in the face quite so clearly.

“You wanted to provoke an emotional reaction?” He asked after a long silence.

“I wanted to provoke any reaction at all. You can’t make this all about Nat, man.”

What?

He turned, and frowned through the darkness. The headlights backlit the archer, but they didn’t hide his intent expression. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“In a perfect world, we’ll get to that cabin and you’ll find confirmation of everything you remember. You’ll have the certainty of what it was like to have found freedom with Nat, and to have your child—and you’re going to know every single thought going through your mind when you lead those teams away…”

“Do you think I don’t know it now?” Why the hell else would he have come out here? Every word road a puff of clouded air as he spoke. “Do you think I don’t feel it? That I don’t remember what it was when she pushed that little girl out and I held her in my arms? Or when I had to wipe away the fluid on her face or how it felt when she opened those perfect eyes the first time?”

He stalked forward narrowing the distance.

“That I can’t see her at her mother’s breast? Or remember that she didn’t cry or fuss much, but she was so mentally active? She focused on us especially her mom when we spoke? That I experienced fear the first time I saw her flip herself over? Or that when she crawled, I realized she could get into things? That I didn’t think about her every fucking minute I fought those bastards?”

Tears burned in his eyes…

“No man, I didn’t think any of those things. But you're living in denial—you’re going to break and you need to do that now, before you get there, before you face that past—and before you break it to her.” The remote challenge in his voice evaporated under a layer of empathy and James bowed his head and shook it even as tears slipped down his face.

“It was forty years ago…”

“And you remembered it four days ago. Grief is grief, man.” Clint leaned against the hood of the still running engine. “In a perfect world—this would never have happened to you two. In a perfect world, maybe you would have met during the war—and you’d have brought home a Russian bride to Brooklyn.”

A wet laugh escaped him, and James shook his head. “She was fifteen by the end of the war. I think my mother would have boxed my ears good.”

“Maybe—but young brides weren’t that unusual were they?”

He supposed not, but still… “It’s not a perfect world.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You’re an asshole.”

Clint actually grinned at him. “Sometimes…or maybe I know my Russian assassins and I know when they are locking everything down. Nat might be able to divorce herself from her feelings, but eventually it takes a toll even on her. You’ve taken body blow after body blow for the last couple of years…and your whole world just flipped over. You got it all back and you’re focusing on this one piece…”

“If I think about the rest I might lose my mind,” he admitted. “I’ve never been able to trust my mind, or even my existence. Not in decades. The only constant has been her…”

“And you’re putting her at the center of it. I get that.” He actually sounded like he did. “You deserve a hell of a lot more kindness than you’ve ever received, but you can’t bottle this shit up. Because fuck knows how Nat’s going to take this news…and you’re going to be all in with her when it happens. Can you afford to snap then?”

No. But she would have Steve and Clint…and fuck, probably Stark too. But none of them had been there. None of them had held her hand or braced her when the pain tried to tear her apart. They weren’t there when she swallowed back her screams because she’d been taught pain was weakness and to never show it.

They hadn’t been there when she stared down at the child they’d created and seemed so fucking lost before the joy crested in her eyes. How many nights had they stared down at her sleeping soundly and marveled that they could feel so much for this tiny being?

Then he’d had to leave them because he’d screwed up, he hadn’t moved them away, and let their hunters find them. He’d let himself get so wrapped up in having them, he couldn’t hold on…

“C’mon man,” Clint’s hand was on his back, and James was on his knees in the snow, head down as he tried to remember how to breathe. “You can do it…”

“You knew…” He managed through the explosions of air. It was like lancing an infected wound, the pressure release agony and ecstasy in one burning moment.

“That you blamed yourself?” Clint offered, and despite the brace on his leg, he stayed with James on the uneven ground and kept a hand on him, reminding him he wasn’t living in the past. “Kind of hard to miss.”

“I should have moved them,” he admitted.

“Yeah, you said you screwed up, that you trusted in your anonymity, and then there was no time…” Clint sighed. “Did you hear me when I said you’d never have found Nat if she hadn’t wanted to be found?”

“It was still me.”

The other man shook his head and James dashed away the tears from his face as he forced himself to stand. The snow had soaked through his jeans and left the denim clinging to his legs from the knee down. “We lost her because I screwed up. Nat could have had a life…”

“They were never going to let her have that life,” Clint told him. “Fifteen years after she walked away from the Red Room, and I recruited her to SHIELD, they were still coming for her from time to time…and not even a month ago, we dealt with the latest bastards wanting to take her back to that hell. That’s not on you or her. She’s _survived_ and so did you. Survived against all the odds.”

Leonid.

Alexei.

Madame B.

Karpov.

Ivanovich.

Pierce.

Ross.

They were just new names on a long list of bastards who thought they owned her. Owned him.

“You did what a _father_ would do, Barnes. You saved your daughter and her mother. Nat did what a _mother_ would do. She protected her child the only way she knew how and you both gave yourselves up to make sure that little girl had a chance.”

But the agony was, did she have that chance? Had she lived?

Fuck.

Straightening, he dug into the pocket of his jacket and dragged out the cigarettes and Clint laughed.

“What’s so funny?” James asked as he got a cigarette out and lit. The cold night air around them helped dry the tears on his face as he got it all under control. Oddly enough, he felt better even if he despised the breakdown.

“Not a damn thing—except you’re smoking, which means you’re back to thinking. The icy wall you were trying to barricade around yourself is down.”

“How the fuck did Natalia put up with you all these years?” The complaint carried no heat because Barton hadn’t been wrong.

“I’m an acquired taste,” Clint admitted, but the humor in his voice had dissipated. “And she’s a rare woman.”

“That she is.” In truth, James did blame himself. For what happened then and for what would happen next. When he told Natalia, he would be breaking her heart all over again. But he couldn’t keep it to himself, no matter if she were destined to never remember.

Natalia had a right to every part of her life stolen away or forcibly removed because she had to surrender.

For him.

Fresh pain ballooned in his chest and he rubbed a hand against it as if he could ease the ache. She surrendered to find him. If she’d managed to wake him—would she have stolen him back to their daughter?

Would he ever know that answer?

Hell, did he _want_ to know the answer?

“You ready to do this?” Clint asked after James put out the cigarette.

“No,” he said, then blew out a breath. The pain in his chest was a persistent dull throb in time with his heart. “I don’t know why I hoped I was wrong.”

“Because it’s a horrible truth.” The archer said with a shrug. “When the truth came out about SHIELD, made me question every decision about them. Made me look sideways at every mission I did. Knowing what I know now—I look back and wonder if the reason I got that kill order was because Hydra wanted Nat gone or SHIELD did. Or was it both? Or did they predict I’d bring her in rather than kill her? How much of this was pre-determined? How much of it happened because I was in the right place at the right time and I wouldn’t make the call they wanted? My hands are hardly clean. I’ve done my fair share of assassinations.”

“Do you think the truth matters?”

“Sometimes.” Clint shrugged. “Sometimes it just matters that it happened. Billionaire gets kidnapped in Afghanistan, makes the news for a couple of weeks, then fades behind the latest celebrity scandal. A few months later, Iron Man is on the scene because that billionaire no one gave two real thoughts about, turns out to be a tougher son of a bitch than the people who took him. A scrawny kid from Brooklyn volunteers for some science fiction experiment, becomes a hero in the time of war, and sacrifices himself only to wake up some seventy years later? A pair of kids get sucked into dark experiments in Russia and find themselves fighting to be themselves decades later? The reality is—shit happens and you make the best decisions you can. Nat’s a Russian assassin and a hero. Those are both true. Steve’s a kid from Brooklyn with a chip on his shoulder and a hero—they’re both true. Stark’s an entitled jackass and a hero. You’re a war hero, an assassin, and a dad. Do any of these truths negate the other?”

It was a hell of a way to look at it. “We have what we have…”

“…when we have it.” Clint nodded. “Pretty much. The only person who can answer whether the truth is important is you. Do you need to have this confirmed?”

The cold air against his face dried the tears. “Yes.”

“Then we do this.”

James glanced at him. “Okay.” The rawness around his heart wasn’t going away anytime soon. “You holding up?” Because the other man was still on the road to recovery from the hell of a bad break and they were standing with their asses hanging out on the side of the frozen highway after flying cross country.

“I’ve got a cane, and a crazy bastard to keep me on my feet, how could I not?”

He laughed. “It’s your wit that keeps Natalia around, isn’t it?”

“I think she just wants me to dress up the scenery,” Clint said sagely. “Someone has to class us all up.”

“That might explain Stark,” James retorted as he walked him back to the jeep, keeping an eye on him.

“Ouch.”

“Calling it like I see it.”

“Money does not buy class,” Clint argued.

“It doesn’t hurt though,” James told him. “Besides—he’s got style.”

“Harboring a secret boy crush?”

With a snort, James just smirked. “Jealous?”

The other man laughed, and that dull ache in his chest expanded but he could breathe. He was right to do this without Natalia, to confirm it. He needed to have all the answers possible for her before he told her. Steve had to be there, and James had to be stable.

“Thanks,” he said a while later as he neared the cut off. The closer he got, the more he recognized even in the dark and under a blanket of snow. He’d made this trip toward White Sulphur Springs several times even if he spaced out the visits to keep his presence unobtrusive.

“For what?” Clint roused, then scrubbed a hand over his face. Had he fallen asleep? “Oh…for babysitting.” His half grumped comment pulled a smile from James. “It’s all part of the services I offer…”

Sure it was.

He slowed the jeep, switching to off road with care. “Hold on, it’s going to be bumpy.” Memory told him where the track was and the vehicle bounced twice as he found the packed dirt and gravel under the snow.

“We close?” Clint grimaced, bracing a hand on the frame.

“Yeah—it’s a half mile hike up.” He glanced over at him. It was after midnight.

“I can handle it.” The archer told him.

Not expressing the doubt on his mind, he pushed the jeep to follow the track. If he recalled it correctly, he could get higher and closer to the cabin if he followed the path. The snow hid the terrain from him so he crawled along, but he relied on the climbs he’d made and how he’d memorized the path. “The cabin’s not visible from the road, and it’s tucked in a natural valley, meant smoke wouldn’t be seen from the road either.”

“Did you know it before you chose it?”

“No, we scouted it—and Natalia pointed it out. We debated building another structure, but I wanted her under proper shelter and it worked.”

“So you modified it around her.” Not a question.

“Yes, the fireplace first. I wanted her warm.”

“What did you do for you?” Were they back to that?

James continued the slow crawl, and then he spotted the old copse of pines where he’d stashed a crate of ammo, and weapons. There were several such caches all over the property. “Freedom,” he said. “I did that for me. I went when she asked, I tried to build this life with her. It’s weird…I look back to when I got that draft notice and dreaded the idea of going overseas to fight. Didn’t want to do it. My dad fought in the first war—Steve’s dad died over there. My dad was never the same. We knew lots of guys in the neighborhood that came back different, and a lot more that didn't come back at all. I didn’t want that to be me. But I figured if I made it, I’d come back and find me a girl, settle down and raise babies…took me thirty five years, but I almost had that.”

“But you didn’t remember that then.”

“Doesn’t matter,” James told him. “I remember it now.” More, he had her back in his life, in his arms, and his bed. He had a chance to build something with her. Oddly, the conversation reminded him of Steve wanting to get a place for the three of them, a place to settle in and build their lives. What had Natalia asked him?

_“Do you really not care about Steve’s house idea?”_

_“I didn’t say I didn’t care…I just don’t feel strongly one way or the other.”_

Did he care now?

The snow was getting deeper and he slowed to a stop, but left the engine running. He didn’t want the engine to get too cold. “It’s up there…” He pointed ahead to where the headlights faded off in the darkness. He slanted a look at Clint. “Stay here, I’ll hike it first.”

“Hey…”

“No arguments.” He freed the seatbelt clip, and then reached behind the seat for his rucksack. “It’s been forty years since I made the climb and your leg is in a brace. Not to mention it’s dark and there’s snow.” He pulled out a pair of radios and checked the channels, then tuned them to each other.

“Nice.” Clint said taking it.

“I’ll check in once I’m up there. And have a route to get you there.”

Leaving Clint, he shouldered the rucksack and slid the radio into a strap on his belt before he set out. The jeep was running, and the heat was on. Once he made it up, he could come down and carry Clint up. The incline wasn’t viciously sharp. Still, he was glad to make it in the dark. They’d spent months of winter up here—they’d spent nearly two full winters up here.

Mary Elizabeth had been almost a year old when they came for them. She’d just been standing, and learning a couple of words.

Mama was one.

But she hadn’t mastered Papa yet. That was fine, she’d had the most open smile and bestowed it upon him every time she saw him whether he was fetching her from a nap or returning from a hunt. She always swiveled to face him and gave him that sunny smile.

His breath backed up in his lungs. Every step carrying him higher brought more images. Babies had a very particular scent. He remembered that from when Becca was born, even when he resented her, he’d liked snuggling her after a bath. Cradling Mary Elizabeth, he’d found himself savoring her sweet baby scent, too. Had it triggered memories of his sisters? Or feelings for them? Maybe—right now, he could almost smell the hint of talcum powder and the baby wash he’d stocked in the last couple of months before she came. He’d made alternating trips to White Sulphur Springs and to a town farther away; he didn’t want people to notice the baby supplies he purchased.

The air grew colder and with a harsher bite as he spotted the oversized rock that marked the edge of the garden they’d planted the first spring. He’d gone as far as Bozeman to retrieve seeds, along with clothing for Mary Elizabeth, and other items they’d needed. They’d planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce. Natalia’s reaction to harvesting them had been worth the work to figure it out.

Memories swamped him one after the other like fat hurricane fed waves slamming into the shore. Or maybe crashing down on him like the snow breaking away to tumble down the mountain and threatening to sweep him away. But he clung to them…Clint had been right.

The guilt for abandoning them threatened to choke him, but that year here—the year with them—it had been a perfect, imperfect idyll. Then he was there, the cabin loomed out of the dark…the wooden walls, and porch. The boards creaked as he stepped across the porch, and then he pushed the door inward, and inside, he smelled disuse…dust…and age.

Fumbling a flashlight out of his rucksack, he flipped it on and stared at the time capsule forty years later.

An empty teacup sat on the coffee table. A blanket tossed over the back of the heavy green sofa. The fireplace was cold, and full of ashes. Old wood stacked in a bin next to it. With every step he took farther inside, he walked back into the past.

That was all that remained intact.

A pulled out drawer from the dresser lay in the middle of the floor. Bare of anything, James didn’t need items to identify it. She would have yanked it out, and dumped the blankets and cushion inside it into the go bag. A chair still sat pressed right up next to the bed. Pillows were strewn carelessly and the linen rotted away.

It was all here.

The life they almost had.

It was here.

Sinking to his haunches, he buried his face in his hands and let the tears come.

The life they’d wanted…

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to the room. “So sorry…”


	41. Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When it rains, it pours...Tony juggles news from Talbot, Steve wrestles with keeping Bucky's secret still, and Peter just wants to work on his suit...and maybe do some training...

**Chapter Forty-One**

**Truths**

**Tony**

 

 

It took him the full two hours since he spoke to Red and Steve to recalibrate the kill switch sensors to transmit instead of receive. At this range though—he’d be lucky to get any kind of a signal at all. “Any luck on the facial recognition searches baby girl?”

“Sorry Boss, at the time they left, I was still auto scrubbing them from any feeds. The data isn’t recorded so I can’t back it up to track them. I have a line on the Clint’s jeep though, it may be parked at a municipal airport on Long Island. I’ve got a drone en route to get a better look.”

Well that was something.

“ETA on Red?”

“Captain Rogers and Ms. Romanoff are scheduled to arrive on the helipad in thirty minutes.” Sending a quinjet would have caused too many ripples even if those were faster, and he had access to a fleet of corporate helicopters, might as well put them to work.

“Okay, you’ve got the band frequency for Barnes’ arm?”

“I’m scanning now, Boss. I’m having to work this in concentric circles, increasing the range by an exposition of a one hundred miles. They weren’t meant to receive or transmit over long distances.”

No they were meant to shock him out of a trigger or at least knock him on his ass if he slipped. In theory, that would be happening right in front of him.

“Do what you can. Repurpose a couple of satellites if we have to…”

“Boss, the signals don’t transmit that far, it would be difficult to use a satellite to create a booster…”

“Fine.” A headache pounded behind one eye and he squinted. “Try bouncing it through cell towers. There’s one of those about every twenty-two to forty-four miles give or take. Let’s transmit a ping, we’re looking at 5 second delay most likely, so ten second pings and work your way to every cell tower in the country.”

“And if they’ve gone beyond U.S. borders?”

He really didn’t want to think about that. “One problem at a time.”

“Understood…General Talbot is on the line for you and Mr. Parker is in the lobby.”

If it were possible for his headache to grow _louder_ his must have added a trombone section.

“Doesn’t Peter have school?” Tony checked his watch. It was just after nine in the morning.

“Mr. Parker has a teacher in service day today and was scheduled to work on the suit upgrades for Captain Rogers as well as diagnostics with his suit, and tactical software updates for Karen.”

Some distant portion of his mind recalled that vague appointment. “And he’s supposed to meet with Red for training if she was back from her job.”

“Yes,” Friday said almost gently as if worried about his reaction.

“Hell…” The new armor for Rogers’ was in his private lab across the room currently waiting for current tests about ten feet away from CQ samples including the brand new one he’d been running tests on all night.

It was the most stable form he’d found, and the energy output was comparable to an ARC reactor, and the radiation signature was similar to a low frequency gamma radiation. Low frequency.

Very low frequency.

The Geiger counter didn’t even react to it.

“Tell the kid to grab something to eat on the common room floor, and give me a minute.” He left his lab and pushed through the closet after sealing it up to head to his own kitchen. Only after he’d gotten a fresh pot of coffee brewing, and pulled a Red Bull out of the fridge to shotgun did he move to his living room.

“Give me General Tall Butt.”

That was weak. Especially for him. But he was tired.

“Stark,” General Talbot said, turning to face the monitor. “You look like crap.”

“I’m also busy, what do you want?” Most days, he could play the game but he wanted answers in hand before Red walked in the door. She was already aggravated about the kill switch, and he would offer her an apology—except he wouldn’t apologize for wanting to keep her safe. Which meant things were going to drop into a frosty détente at best. So the right answer would be Barnes’ location so they could figure out what was going on.

Talbot dropped a file on his desk and unbuttoned his blue uniform jacket before bracing his hands on the desk. “I want your help.”

The last thing they needed was a mission. “What does the Committee have for us?”

“This isn’t the Committee asking,” Talbot explained, then he loosened his tie and glanced beyond his computer a moment before returning to stare into the monitor. “Is this connection secure?”

“Shouldn’t you have asked that to begin with?” Tony studied the general. There were bags under his eyes, a weariness to his features, and his typically hard and guarded eyes looked more than a little worried.

Either he was a damn good actor or something was up.

“Is the damn line secure or not, Stark?” Talbot glared at him.

“All my lines are secure. Wiretaps give me hives. What’s going on?”

The agitation around him beckoned for someone to offer him assistance. It would be easy to step up and say, let the Avengers take care of it—obviously it had to be big or Talbot wouldn’t have reached out in the first place. But to be that eager would require he overlook the fact Talbot had just days earlier been on site in Louisiana with Nat’s alias when some of the bioorganic material escaped containment. Not only had Talbot ordered them to take care of her, he’d been unsurprised by the material’s behavior.

The guy was dirty.

“Let me be perfectly clear, I don’t want to read you into this project. I’ve worked damn hard to keep all of you Avengers out of it. Frankly, I don’t think any of you—especially you civilians—have any business interfering in government business…”

“Fine, figure it out yourself then.” Tony leaned forward as if to terminate the connection and Talbot raised a hand.

“Wait.”

Giving the general the same look he usually reserved for reporters or recalcitrant board members who insulted Pepper in front of him, he said, “Two minutes.”

“You really are an ass,” Talbot complained.

“One minute and fifty-five seconds.” Then he walked over to his kitchen to pour his coffee while Talbot sputtered.

Finally the man said, “Eight years ago I was brought aboard the Helix Project. The program, military funded, utilized civilian resources provided by the Roxxon Corporation, and later joined by Oscorp to work on developing alternative fuel sources and fuel source research. Among the substances under investigation, material mined from the floor of the Arctic Ocean using specialized equipment…provided by SHIELD science resources.”

Tony didn’t twitch. Though the way Talbot said SHIELD didn’t sound like he was particularly enthusiastic about the intelligence operation.

“They formed the project in the late 90s, they’d done shit all to really develop resources we could use, but the project continued because…”

“You at least found weaponizable resources.” Tony was very familiar with this story.

A single nod. “Roxxon focused on the materials related to fossil fuels, Oscorp branched out into more specialized energy resources using radiation infused materials for potential...” Whatever it was, he edited himself before saying.“I’ll save you the boring details, but it’s a political dirty bomb waiting to drop.”

“You’re at about thirty seconds, and I haven’t heard the part where I’m supposed to give a damn.” He pushed the man because the general was on the edge or he wouldn’t be on this call in the first place.

“Four years ago, materials harvested by Roxxon from the Arctic Ocean became active—during the thirteen or fourteen years Roxxon had the material, they’d separated it, recombined it, and even repurposed it—but they got no where. The non-carbon based chains simply remained unreactive. Why they even kept screwing with it is anyone’s guess, but four years ago—it changed. One of the derivatives became so unstable it tried to consume people, taking them over and turning them into-for the lack of a better term zombies.”

“Like your little field experiment in Alaska.” If they were going to call a spade a spade.

“That wasn’t an experiment so much as a containment breach. We lost good people there, specialists trying to fix what Roxxon broke.”

“They were trying to combine CQ-D with CQ-A?” Tony dared him to deny it.

“And it’s proving impossible to recombine them. Whatever Roxxon did to separate the components, they refuse to work together. CQ-D grows more unstable daily, it seemed viable as an energy resource and now it’s a ticking time bomb. CQ-A is toxic, the dirty bomb waiting to wipe out whole populations. If it gets out—the only way to stop it is to destroy it and everything around it in fire—if we’re lucky enough to contain it long enough to eliminate every last molecule.”

Or freeze it, but Tony kept that observation to himself. “And now we’ve reached the end of your two minutes. What. Do. You. Want?”

“I want you to help us track down and eliminate the materials because about two hours ago, a massive break in at Roxxon removed all of the CQ-A in their Louisiana storage facility.”

Ice slithered down Tony’s spine.

“And we have no idea who took it or where it’s going…” Talbot’s aggrieved tone made tremendous more sense.

“How did they penetrate the security?”

“A hacker named Miles Lydon compromised their servers and containment systems, but the code he used was purged prior to this. He’s currently in custody and cooperating. At the moment, there’s nothing on the security cameras, in the server systems…nothing to indicate who got in and took it. We know the system was further compromised when an outside agent interfered last week…”

_Outside agent my ass._

“If you could point out what the hacker did and you have him in custody, then it was probably an inside job.” Again they didn’t need him for the investigation, they needed the Avengers to put out the fire. “Where is the CQ-D reserves kept?”

The senior Roxxon researcher who had been killed. Another researcher killed in Greenland. Salvaged material from the Arctic.

“That was compartmentalized on a need to know basis,” Talbot admitted with a sour expression.

“And you didn’t need to know.” Well, the worm the turned right there, didn’t it?

“No…I can give you everything we have on the Helix Project with regard to CQ-A…”

“Who would know?” At Talbot’s silence, Tony nodded. “Of course. The one who did know—is missing and either dead or involved.” It wasn’t a question.

The general sighed, sinking down into a chair. “I’ll be straight with you Stark, this is a cluster fuck of a project that should have been shelved a decade ago. Even after I was assigned to it as an aid for General Harington, it was going nowhere fast…then four years ago, everything changed.”

“The Battle of New York,” Tony said slowly. “The material became active before or after Loki opened the portal?”

“During.” Talbot admitted.

“Have you brought Eric Selvig in to the research?” The man had built the device able to harness the Tesseract’s awesome capabilities.

“He’s currently under lockdown and observation at a psychiatric facility outside of London. He’s been there on and off since the Battle of New York. We’ve sent people to talk to him—but he has nothing. Or if he does, he doesn't make enough sense to get his information across.”

Tony rubbed at his chin, and his phone buzzed next to him. The message on the screen said _Helicopter landing in five minutes._

“Send me everything you have. No more red tape or stonewalling. I also need the name of who was in charge of the CQ-D side of things. You said Oscorp was involved…what were they researching?”

Talbot shook his head. “Radiation infused materials—it’s complicated…” he hesitated.

“Complicated or you don't actually know for sure?” It shouldn’t surprise Tony. Stark Industries had handled more than their fair share of military contracts over the years and he tended to favor minimal reporting until he had something to show for his work. It protected intellectual property and kept them from interfering where they weren’t experts.

“You’ve made your point Stark,” Talbot snapped out. “I’ll have everything I have sent over within the hour, including last known sightings and the specifications needed for containment. We need to locate and destroy this material before exposure…”

“Of course…and there’s something else you’re going to do for me.” Tony let it sit there, a live grenade dropped right between them.

“What?” Talbot paused in mid tightening of his askew tie.

“Natasha Romanoff.”

“Not a chance in hell.” His expression went implacable.

“Well then I’m afraid I’m busy this week, you might have to kick start your own containment resources.” He and Talbot were not friends. They barely qualified as acquaintances. The majority of their interactions took place in the public arena or over items like—taking possession of the Iron Man suits. Rhodey had a semi-decent working relationship with the man, but Talbot outranked him and that made it a sticky situation.

“You can’t do that…you signed the Accords.”

“And you just said this wasn’t a job for the Committee. Which means this isn't sanctioned. Which means I'd be in violation of the Accords to even put my neck out there.” Tony leaned back on the sofa. “Therefore, I can do whatever the hell I want when it comes to personal favors.”

“Romanoff is toxic, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Well, you’re creative. Figure something out.”

“She _violated_ the Accords.” Talbot argued, a vein pulsing in his head.

“She prevented further destruction and violence by removing two key players from the board—this following escalating violence and destruction and the severe injury of one of our own. It was a tactical decision—it’s also worth mentioning that in doing so she prevented the unlawful and frankly downright criminal arrest and prosecution of a pair of U.S. war heroes, one of whom has not only been cleared by the same damn Committee but is also currently working full time as Avenger again and the other is being granted Prisoner of War and Pardon status by the U.S. government in accordance with his honorable status of service and loss fighting for his country.” Tony didn’t raise his voice once. “She did a fucking public service and she’s under possible indictment for using her brain. No dice.”

The man leaned back and stared at him. “Stark—she’s under investigation from a dozen different governments, including our own… Ross…”

“She handed you Ross on a silver platter.”

“He’s a three star general, and was the Secretary of State and she tanked his career.”

“Really? _She_ tanked his career? That was her giving the instructions to have me and Rogers killed? That was her burning his arm and torturing _him_? That was her who signed off on giving Blonsky radiated blood? That was her who decided to leverage her control over the Committee to pursue a personal and very bloody agenda of revenge?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Oh, it’s very much the point. I want Romanoff cleared of all charges, I want the protections offered to her by SHIELD back in place…”

“She took down SHIELD.” The vein in Talbot’s forehead throbbed.

“And one would think you would personally owe her for pointing out the terrorist threat embedded in our backyards and risking personal safety and security to out them to the world…” Some truths hurt.

“She compromised our intelligence for what could be decades…”

“SHIELD wasn’t providing intelligence, not wholly. They were selling lies. They were developing weapons from Hydra technology, they fired a _nuclear weapon_ at the isle of Manhattan. But you’ve been cleaning up after the Project Insight fallout for years—with access to data you would never have had without her.”

“She’s a damn Russian spy, Stark.”

“She _was_. But she hasn’t been in years. Her loyalty and dedication are unquestionable…” He didn’t flinch. Not even when Friday alerted him to the helicopter landing. Steve and Red were on their way to him. “Fix it. Clear her so I can get her reinstated as an Avenger.”

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe,” Tony told him cheerfully. “But you need me and I need this. You scratch my back; I’ll clean up your international incident. Think of them both as matters of national security.”

He made a gesture and Friday cut the signal. Blowing out a breath, he took a sip of his coffee and rose. “Let me know as soon as Talbot sends the details Friday…”

“Packets are being sent now. I’m clearing them of any spyware before loading them onto a locked server for your examination.”

“Good girl.”

Downing another mouthful of coffee, he turned to face the elevator just as it dinged.

 

**Steve**

 

 

The whole flight back to Manhattan, he’d wrestled with telling her Bucky remembered everything. Twice he’d almost said something before they left and both times, she told him not to betray Bucky’s secret. It left him in an uncomfortable position with knots in his stomach. Bucky had vanished from the Tower with Clint for backup.

On one hand, that was good. He wasn’t out there trying to verify whatever it was he’d remembered on his own. On the other, he hadn’t said a word to Steve about his actual plans and he hadn’t alerted Nat. Was he hoping they would be too preoccupied with the art retrieval to notice? Or was he more focused on getting his hands on the truth?

It wasn’t like Steve didn't understand the desire. He hadn’t been able to stop when he’d found out Bucky was alive. Learning more and more about what had happened to him in the intervening decades made his pursuit of the truth vital to his sanity. So, yes, Steve absolutely understood the single-minded focus to know the _truth_. At the same time, he couldn’t escape the fact he held back from Natasha that which she had a _right_ to know. But Buck had a _right_ to his choices, too.

As long as Nat insisted he not betray Buck, he’d hold his tongue but it didn’t mean it cost any less to be trapped between his loyalties to both of them. Even if Nat insisted he choose Bucky over her. Still, the whole flight back, she’d hooked her pinky around his, as though aware that while pilot knew exactly who Steve was, Nadja Rasmussen in her ice blonde wig and photo static veil altered face was Stark’s personal assistant and they shouldn't be 'close'. That they were traveling together at all might send up a red flag, but they didn’t have time to play it safe.

So they pretended polite distance as they boarded the luxuriously appointed helicopter and began the long trip back to Manhattan. The fact it flew four hundred miles to Manhattan in a little under two hours was impressive, but Steve focused on the woman next to him, the way her pinky hooked around his while her sunglass shielded gaze focused out the window.

They’d gone from a spending the night clinging to and plundering pleasure from each other to embracing an icy reserve he certainly didn’t feel. Until Tony brought up the kill switch, Steve had half-forgotten it. He wanted to kick his own thoughtless ass for having let the fact Bucky insisted and Tony had been more than willing to do the work slip his mind. They’d survived Budapest, Volgagrad, Moscow, and finally Arkangelsk.

The three of them had fought together to put Nat’s plan into motion, they’d rescued Clint, and they’d taken out the pair of ruthless Russian bastards who’d wanted to take possession of Nat and do—whatever horror show they had in mind. The three of them had prevented her from being trapped in the chair again, and the three had worked together to destroy the facility and erase all the evidence of those they’d been growing in the basement.

It had been a nightmare made fact, and one that promised to haunt Steve for the rest of his life. Those incidences were but a sample of the hell Nat and Bucky had suffered for decades. In the days that followed, they all stuck close to her as Clint faced his surgery, then Tony made arrangements to get Clint home. Steve and Bucky had time to tear down some of the crumbling walls around Nat and she gave them a chance to show her she didn’t have to choose between her past or her present, that they could work together to build a future.

Then Ross.

Then the pardons.

Then bringing the Avengers together again, rebuilding the team, the missions, the sludge, Nat’s jobs, and training the Spider-Punk—and the near fight over Tony—and finally building bridges and taking her on real dates, even if they had to limit their in public time because all the while she was still a fugitive.

So much had happened, and the kill switch faded to a half-remembered moment amidst a series of conflicts they’d fought so hard to win.

It wasn’t an excuse. But he needed to understand how he could be so thoughtless not just for her but for himself. Bucky was his best friend—did he even remember the kill switch? Or did he still not care?

_Bucky frowned, then looked at Tony. “You can build something…put it in my arm. Something that can incapacitate me?”_

_“Buck!”_

_But his best friend ignored the objection and focused on Tony. “A kill switch if need be.”_

_“I can,” Tony said slowly, his expression more concentrated thought than malice. “You sure you want to give me that kind of power?”_

_“You don’t want to kill me anymore,” Barnes said with a hell of a lot more confidence than Steve possessed. While Tony had felt rightfully betrayed, his determination to kill Bucky in Siberia had left he and Steve at odds. Steve admired how far Tony had come, how much capacity for forgiveness he seemed to possess and yet…this was a dangerous offer. “If you did—you wouldn’t have let Natalia stop you last night. You don’t like me. But you don’t want to kill me. You will protect Natalia though. Or you can give the switch to him.” He nodded to Clint._

_“Buck, this is insane…” Steve had to argue, Nat wouldn’t want this. Hell Steve didn’t want this._

_“No, Steve. It’s trust. The mission is to protect Natalia. I cannot do my mission if I am prevented from going. Or I must incapacitate all of you in order to be there. None of that serves the mission.”_

_God, he sounded like Nat._

_“So create a way to eliminate me as a threat if she is in danger, and we can work on the mission together.”_

_For his part, Tony didn’t answer immediately. He merely stared at Bucky, maybe working out what he wanted to do or would be willing. Finally, he asked, “What is…Natasha to you?”_

_“I want her to live long enough for me to answer that question.” Bucky said. “Being with her settles me. Being around her brings me peace. I have to keep her safe.”_

Every single word resonated with the next days and weeks. The closer they grew, the more Steve found his old friend emerging until…he remembered.

Everything.

_“Steve, I broke both of her legs once, and both of her arms to make sure she couldn’t escape when they sent me to bring her back.”_

The rawness in his voice, the thickness of the pain overlaid every word. They tore at him. Reconciling those acts with the best friend he grew up with and loved was difficult enough, reconciling them with the man who clearly worshipped her? It seemed impossible. He’d told Tony once it wasn’t Bucky. The Winter Soldier might have been used to kill Howard and his wife Maria, but it wasn’t Bucky.

Just like it was the Soldier who’d been sent to bring her back.

The Soldier had been ordered to break her.

Then again, it was the Soldier in Switzerland who reached out to her. Wanted to protect her. Needed her on some level none of them had been able to understand then, and Steve was only beginning to comprehend now.

Bucky would always choose Nat. He would fight to be there for her. He would fight anyone who kept her away. But when they’d robbed them from each other, something inside each of them had broken. Robbed of those memories, Nat had years to rebuild, to heal—and she’d had Clint and to an extent Fury, Coulson, and SHIELD to give her something else to fight for.

Then she’d had Stark, the Avengers…and Steve.

Bucky was still rebuilding his life, but all his illusions had been stripped away leaving the man he’d been, the Soldier he’d been forced to become, and the person those two became to pick up the pieces. He had a little over two years, not even that long since they’d all been reunited.

Maybe it had been his hands, but Steve would never believe it was _Bucky_ or even _the Soldier_ who had chosen to do those things. They’d been the tools. The weapons. And damn it all, Bucky and Nat had been the targets and victims, too.

Never again.

Not as long as there was breath in his body would he let that happen to either of them.

Nat squeezed his finger when the pilot announced they were touching down in five minutes. He stole a glance at her profile. The face wasn’t hers, even if he knew it was just the faintest of wire meshes laid over the features he adored. Still, she tightened her pinky’s grip on his and he forced himself to take a deep breath, then released it. Then another. And another.

His pulse quieted, and a calm settled over him.

He understood what Bucky meant about how she settled him.

Since the day he’d arrived on the hellicarrier, he’d found himself glancing to Nat for confirmation and guidance—whether it was bringing Loki in, was Barton up for a mission so soon after having been under mind control, were the mission specs up to date, could they really penetrate security with just a two man team to open it up to the rest, was the STRIKE team the right one to deploy, what the hell did they do with SHIELD turning on him and Nick’s flash drive, could they get Sam’s wings from behind Fort Mead’s considerable security…

If he questioned a move, he could glance at Nat and she would point him in the right direction.

He might have once carried Peggy’s photograph safely stored inside his compass, but Nat had become his compass. As upset as she had to be and as worried, she was focused, calm, and ready to face off with Tony, him, and anyone else that required it in order to find Bucky and bring him home.

Or maybe just to protect him—hadn’t she said leave him alone? Let him do whatever it was he needed to do?

She didn’t want to be a shackle or a control…she craved freedom because she’d always had hers taken away. It didn’t matter how much control he or Buck would cede to her, she’d never take it.

Some truths were the foundation upon which they were formed. Steve would always stand up to bullies. Bucky would fight to protect what he loved. Tony would always battle against those who’d turn weapons on the innocent. Clint would defend those closest to him.

Nat?

She’d fight for every single damn one of them.

The helicopter touched down with a little bump and Nat had the door open. Steve shouldered his shield and moved to cover her as they stepped out. The blades were still slowing, but he rotation pushed a heavy air current at them. He kept a hand on her lower back as he fell in behind. Bags in hand, they crossed to the entrance and gave the pilot a half-wave. They were barely inside when the helicopter launched again.

Friday opened the elevator for them. “Mr. Stark is in the penthouse and Mr. Parker is on the common room floor.”

“Peter is here?” Nat asked, stripping off the wig as soon as they were inside the elevator. Steve juggled her backpack open so she could store it, and he flipped out the veil’s storage case as she stripped it off. Then he locked it into the charger and tucked it back into the box.

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff. He has some work to do on his suit and was hoping to train with you today.”

Even with her hair in braids, Nat looked instantly more like herself still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The chain of his dog tags was just visible under the round collar, as well as a couple of just faintly green hickeys.

Pleasure speared him at the sight, but he packed it away. They needed to keep this business and it was the only thing keeping him from slipping an arm around her and tugging her close.

“Let me talk to Tony and see where we are on tracking down James.” She unpinned the braids and the tips hung past her collarbones just brushing the swell of her breasts. Her hair was getting longer and longer.

He really liked it.

The doors opened to Tony waiting for them, coffee mug in hand. “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he said without preamble. “We’ve reoriented the frequencies for the nano tech I installed for the kill switch. We made them transmitters instead of receivers, and we’re scanning. It will take some time. Talbot called—they lost the CQ-A. Welcome back—you both look very…” His gaze fixed right at her throat before he glanced at her face. “Rested. I take it you both enjoyed Niagara Falls?”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said by way of greeting, and dropped her bag before diverting to the kitchen.

“They lost the CQ-A?” Steve focused on the one item in that list he could do something about.

“So he says—apparently it was lifted right out of Roxxon’s facility a few hours ago and they have no idea _how_ ,” Tony explained as he lead them to the kitchen.

“So the Committee is deploying us to what? Investigate the scene?” The last thing Steve wanted was a mission right now. It would mean leaving Nat while Bucky was out there where the hell ever.

“They’re not deploying us.” That little bomb dropped into the silence as Nat poured two mugs full of coffee before pushing one to Steve and refilling Tony’s when he held his mug out.

“Wait…what?” Steve frowned and glanced at Nat.

“Talbot called you, but not representing the Committee,” she summed up.

“Yep, he sent over everything they have, Friday’s cleaning it of any spy and malware before we open it.”

Steve didn’t understand the last two items other than they were harmful and screwed up computers. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he said, “Of course he bugged the information before he shared it. Does that make his story more or less credible?”

“No idea. We can’t confirm it…” Tony began, but Nat pulled out her phone and dialed a number.

“Friday, can you keep this line scrambled for me so we can tell and prevent anyone trying to listen in on either end?” She swallowed a mouthful of coffee, her thumb hovering over the green call button.

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff. Give me one moment…proceed. The line is scrambled and secure.”

She hit the dial button and it rang twice before a heavily accented and sleepy masculine voice said over the speaker, “Boo, I fucking love your boots, but I will put one up your ass if you don’t have a good reason for waking me up ten minutes after I went to bed.”

“Roxxon got hit last night and I need confirmation it happened.” She didn’t tap her foot or her fingers, if anything she stood with such absolute stillness that only the fact her chest slightly rose and fell betrayed any hint of motion.

“Fuck me,” the voice groaned. “I hate those bastards—Ponchatoula?”

“Yes.”

Tony glanced at him with raised eyebrows and Steve shook his head, he had no idea who she was talking to.

“Give me ten minutes…”

“You have five. You have ears everywhere Remy, I needed confirmation an hour ago.”

“Pushy woman.” Then there was clicking on the other side. “Hang on a damn minute…” A door creaked open. “Sage…” His bellow echoed across the phone line, then it went muffled as if he covered it. “Ponch….xon…ort… _what?_ ”

Nat continued to sip her coffee, cool and even. It was one of the things Steve admired so much about her. Even in the middle of a firefight, she could keep her head. The last thing they needed was the CQ stuff on the loose, but they’d figure it out.

They always did.

They’d find Bucky, and get all of this sorted out and then they’d be on to the next problem. That was life as an Avenger.

The elevator dinged open, and Peter Parker exited with a cheerful grin.

Speaking of the next problem…

 

 

**Peter**

 

“Hey kid…” Tony greeted, but then held up a finger asking for his silence.

“It’s a real good thing I like you boo,” a man on the phone was saying. “We haven’t heard anything about them being hit which means it wasn’t a sanctioned op. Now I have to check it out because if someone pulled off a heist right beneath my nose…”

“Keep your distance,” Natasha ordered. She spared Peter a glance, but her expressionless face didn’t betray her mood. Though she did look—tired might not be the right word. Worried? “You just verify that something happened…have someone pick up Baskin. He’s one of the supervisors there.”

“Got it. I’ll find him—hands on or off?” The guy on the phone had a funny accent, but Peter didn’t recognize it.

“I don’t care,” she told him bluntly. “Do what you need to and call me as soon as you have anything.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“First time for everything,” she said, but her tone gentled to a hint of teasing. The lessening of the tension eased the stiff muscles in his back. From the moment the elevator opened the tense air threatened to choke him.

“You’re going to eat those words,” the man said without any heat.

“Probably,” she said with a shrug. “Talk soon.”

“Yep.”

Then the call was over and she glanced at Tony. “We’ll know what there is to know there within the hour.”

“Friend of yours, I guess?” Tony asked, his expression thoughtful.

“Like I said, I know lots of people.” Then she focused on Peter. “Good morning, Peter.”

“Hey…” He crossed to join them, glancing between them but focusing on Natasha. She always seemed so composed. “Everything all right?”

“Just another day at the Tower,” Mr. Stark quipped. “What’s up?”

“I was working on my suit, but you wanted me to run some tests on the new prototype?”

“Yeah—that’s in a different lab, I’ll get it for you in a bit.” Tony frowned, and then glanced to he and finally Nat. “You two want to go train for a bit? It might take a while before we have anything actionable.”

Captain America—Rogers, Captain Rogers frowned. “I think we’ve got enough on our plates…” But Natasha put a hand on his and shook her head. “You sure, Angel?” Even though he lowered his voice, Peter didn’t miss the endearment and he shifted his gaze elsewhere. That seemed a little too personal.

“It’s fine, unless Peter has something else for me.” It wasn’t really a question, and he frowned when she mentioned him then it hit him—reports. He needed to give her reports.

“I do have something else for you,” he said with a grin. After whipping his phone out of his pocket, he pulled up his dropbox on Mr. Stark’s secure server and then tapped the first report open and handed her the phone. “I’d have emailed it, but you didn’t give me that yet.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, amusement easing onto her expression like it had to sneak in a side door or risk getting bounced. “Friday can give it to you the next time you need it.”

“I’ll take care of it, Ms. Romanoff,” Friday confirmed.

As she glanced at the report, she said, “Tony what’s the eta on your search?”

“I don’t know, Red,” he answered his expression turning more tense. “As long as it takes. Depends on where he went and how they got there.” That was pretty vague, and Peter got it when adults talked around him.

Captain Rogers sighed. “Tony—she’s just asking…”

“She is capable of explaining herself when she needs to offer an explanation,” she said, her tone arch and both Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers winced.

Huh.

They were in trouble.

“I can go work with Karen, we’re still getting the kinks out of the system and after you read the reports I can answer any questions…”

“What is the status of this Vulture?” Natasha asked and all that focus zeroed in on him and Peter’s mouth dried up. Because while she might be ignoring Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers at the moment, neither of them were ignoring him especially Mr. Stark and he’d…

“I thought I told you to leave that guy alone,” Mr. Stark said. There it was. “We had this discussion, Parker—you are a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and you leave the big armored bird guy alone…let the FBI take down his weapons smuggling.”

The Ferry incident was weeks earlier, but Mr. Stark had taken the suit away from him after it and he’d _just_ gotten it back.

“Well…I have been—mostly. Just I know where some of the guys are that worked with him or maybe worked with him or were at least there on the Ferry—the FBI didn’t get all of them and…” He was fumbling the explanation as Mr. Stark nudged up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, Captain Rogers didn’t quite hide a smile and Natasha stared at him, head tilted, and her expression so completely unreadable, Peter saw his suit, his training, and possibly his college future flushing down a toilet. “I just—wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing since I know it was kind of my fault he wasn’t caught, but he’s still out there and he’s still harvesting tech and stuff and wel…I wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone—because that would be on me.”

“So what’s his status…”

“Parker…” Mr. Stark said right over the top of Natasha but she cut a glance at him.

“Tony.”

“Red.”

“You said I was training him.”

“But… I told him…”

“You said you wanted _me_ to train _him._ ”

There was a beat of silence, then Mr. Stark nodded. “I did.”

“So what I say goes, correct?”

Man Peter wanted the floor to swallow him, he caught Captain Rogers’ eye and the Avenger gave him a small smile. Like it was going to be okay. Man, Peter really wanted to believe him. “Guys—maybe we should…” Captain Rogers attempted.

“Yes.” Mr. Stark said in a very clipped tone of voice focused on Natasha.

“Good. Because we all make mistakes—even when we say we _mean_ well. Don’t we?” She wasn’t looking at Peter—thank God—no, she was staring at Mr. Stark and Mr. Stark stared right back, his expression tight.

“Depends on how you define a mistake. Precautions based on past behavior aren’t an arbitrary setting of expectations so much as an active avoidance of issues no one wants to have to deal with _again._ ” Mr. Stark wasn’t happy.

“Precaution or willful blindness? The fact intelligence is kept compartmentalized to a need to know basis suggests a complete and total information blackout from those who might dispute the need and point out the actual mistake.” Natasha was even less happy.

“Nat…” Captain Rogers tried again.

“You’re one to talk about willful blindness, Red. Maybe asking you to handle Parker’s training was a bad idea.”

Peter winced. “Um…”

“Well it’s always a bad idea when someone disagrees with you—”

“Disagrees? No. You agreed on more than one occasion that I was right. Before and after the fact. You’re pissed because you weren’t consulted for the final product.”

“Maybe…” Peter tried again. Captain Rogers expression turned to stone.

“I’m not pissed at all,” she said, her tone flat. “I’m disappointed.”

And a slap couldn’t have rendered Mr. Stark’s expression more startled. “Dammit, Red…”

A whistle cut through the debate. Mr. Stark and Natasha both looked at Captain Rogers. “Time out. Fighting in front of the kid is bad form.”

Natasha flicked a look to Peter, and her expression eased. “Sorry Peter.”

Mr. Stark sighed. “Sorry kid.”

Sucking lemons might have been more appealing, but Peter looked back and forth between them. “You’re not actually fighting about me.”

“We’re not fighting,” Natasha said.

“Yes, we are.” Mr. Stark countered.

“No,” she continued. “We’re not. A disagreement does not equal fighting.”

“You say pot-a-to, I say po-tah-to.”

“ _Vysokomernaya zadnitsa_.” The vehement delivery promised whatever Natasha just said was not polite.

“That was rude, Red.” Mr. Stark countered. “If you want to insult me, English is the preferred language. I can definitely take it.”

Natasha lifted her middle finger, and Peter hid a laugh behind a hand as he turned away from the pair.

“Guys,” Captain Rogers attempted, though he too seemed to be fighting a smile. “Maybe later? We still have a lot on our plates.” He brushed his hand down Natasha’s arm and Peter turned his gaze somewhere else. That seemed even more personal than the endearment. He wasn’t the only one, Mr. Stark just gave him a look when their gazes collided.

“Fine,” she said after a beat and the uncomfortable bubble popped. “We do have a lot to discuss—including this Vulture business.”

“Friday…” Mr. Stark said. “What did Red call me?”

“Tony…” Captain Rogers sighed.

“Boss, I have the files from General Talbot ready for review and narrowed the location on Sergeant Barnes.” Then she said, “Also, Ms. Romanoff called you an arrogant ass.”

There was another beat, and Mr. Stark’s lips twitched. Peter had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from laughing out loud, but it was Captain Rogers who actually let out the first chuckle.

Natasha met Mr. Stark’s gaze evenly, and finally the billionaire shrugged. “Well, you’re not wrong. I’ve been called worse…I accept that description, Red.”

The corner of her mouth quirked upward.

“Lady’s choice,” Mr. Stark continued, “What are we doing first?”

And just like that, all the heat and tension went out of the room.

Weirdest not fight ever.


	42. Pegasus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt for the sludge is on...

**Chapter Forty-Two**

**Pegasus**

**Natasha**

 

 

The answer to Tony’s question was a no brainer. Finding James was vital to her and to Steve, more than vital. She  _wanted_ to find him. But finding the CQ-A was necessary to a hell of a lot more people. It was exactly what she’d said to Steve when they stared out at the rising city in Sokovia—if Tony found a way to take it out, he needed to do it. Everyone up there, including them, versus everyone below—the math wasn’t even a question.

Steve’s gaze snagged her when she said CQ-A, and he nodded once. There was no math that said she put her personal desires ahead of a greater danger and having seen that stuff up close? They needed to track it down.

It took Remy only two minutes past his hour to get back to her, but he had people on the look out for massive tanker trucks that left the Roxxon facility roughly in the time window they were looking at. Tony had lead them into his lab, and she was parked on the far side away from the containment samples, alternating working with Friday to scan maps, cameras, and other programs to track down those trucks with reviewing the literal ton of data Talbot dumped on them while Tony reviewed several different and so far unsuccessful formulas for locking the CQ-A down that he’d tried and that the Roxxon scientists and military researchers had attempted while also overseeing Peter testing the changes to the new suit he had him working on.

Steve was running the names of every person listed in Talbot’s database, looking for any key facts that Talbot may have omitted. She and Tony were both certain there would be plenty of omissions. They weren’t coordinating with the other Avengers as yet; apparently Talbot hadn’t passed this along as a Committee sanctioned task, which meant they would be operating off book. She didn’t miss the looks that passed between Tony and Steve, or the moment Tony pulled Steve aside and out of the lab, leaving she and Peter to work.

Curiosity nagged at her to follow their discussion, but they didn’t have time for her to pry. Frankly, she didn’t have time to be brooding on the topic. James was fine. If he wasn’t… Clint was with him. Clint brought her back enough times in the past, he was probably the most capable of them to manage James if he needed it.

“Natasha?” Peter asked and she glanced away from the search algorithms to where Peter had slid his hand into one of the gauntlets and tested the way the metal snugged to conform to him, then loosened again.

“Problem?” Because if it was an engineering issue, he would need Tony.

“I wanted to ask you a question, but I wasn’t sure if this was a time for questions or a time where I should sit in my corner and work and hope the rest of you don’t notice that I’m here and you send me out.” The wry statement pulled a reluctant smile from her.

“You do realize you just alerted me to the fact you’re here and probably shouldn’t be involved in what may turn out, potentially, to be an Avengers mission?”

Peter winced, then met her gaze. “Something like that.”

“Well—in your favor, I’m technically not an Avenger at the moment either. This isn’t listed as an Avengers mission—so that’s two points that say you can stay here. The third point is up to you—if you’re uncomfortable, no one is going to chastise you for going.”

She was supposed to be teaching him, not throwing him into a fire. Glancing past him to the containment units, she studied the inky substances. They were—quiescent, the sludge lying like a formless liquid in all but the final one where it formed a square. Even placed in a close configuration, the sludge didn’t respond to CQ-Unknown.

“I don’t want to go,” Peter assured her. “I want to help—but you were pretty mad at Mr. Stark.”

“I wasn’t mad at him,” she assured him.

“Yeah, you said disappointed—but it sounded like Aunt May disappointed when I didn’t live up to expectations and made a dumb decision, and what she means is she’s mad at me, but she cares about me too much to yell.” It all sounded perfectly reasonable.

“Does she ever yell at you?” Natasha had done her research on May Parker-Reilly. A widow at a relatively young age, she continued to raise her nephew on her own with only his parents’ social security benefits to supplement her income as a nurse. What savings she and her husband managed prior to his death had all but evaporated. They genuinely lived paycheck to paycheck, but Peter wanted for little that Natasha could see.

“Sure,” Peter told her with a flash of a grin. “When I break things, when I forget to grab milk at the store for the hundredth time because I was distracted or when I lie to her…I’ve only done that a couple of times.”

“Is she still disappointed in you if she’s yelling?”

“Probably, and probably mad she has to do more work when she already has so much to do.” A little shrug. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You are definitely not a burden.” That wasn’t even a question. But Peter lied to his aunt every day by not telling her he was Spider-Man. Not that she intended to bring that up.

“Thanks…”

“So what does my aggressive negotiation with Tony have to do with whether you stay or not?”

“That’s a _Star Wars_ reference!” Peter announced. “I know that one…it’s from the prequels…”

“Peter, focus.”

“Oh, yeah…sorry.” He stood, then slid his hand into the second gauntlet and both locked in like they were made for him and he clenched his fists—testing them perhaps. “Anyway, you seemed upset about something and I was wondering if I could help you—maybe go find Sergeant Barnes? Is he missing?”

“Thank you for the offer, but no.” She hadn’t asked Friday where she’d tracked him to, not yet. Though she had checked the inbox for her mail account a half dozen times to see if Clint dropped her a hint. The definition of karma, she’d left him hanging when she’d gone to Louisiana and apparently he was returning the favor. “James is not _missing_ per se. He’s just taking care of some personal matters and didn’t leave an itinerary.”

“That sounds like missing.” Skepticism rifled over the top of the sentiment.

Twice Peter approached the containment units, but he didn’t even glance at them and they didn’t respond to him at all. They didn’t respond to Peter, and not to Tony. So far only the cube seemed to respond to Steve—a tremble of motion, the sludge had idled like it wasn’t active at all.

“I suppose if you were going by strict definitions, but sometimes you have to trust people to handle themselves and to know their own limits.” Even when you didn’t want to, even when you knew if you concentrated too much on their current status it would force you to face some questions you didn’t want to ask.  

“How do you do that?” Peter set the gauntlets down, then picked up the chest piece and moved it to the worktable. “How do you minimize when worry or fear might be a reasonable response?”

If not for the earnest way he asked, and the very focused intensity in his gaze, she might have blown off the question. But that wouldn’t be fair to him or show much regard for the fact she was supposed to be training him.

“The answer to that is both complicated and not. The uncomplicated part is can I affect it right this moment? Will my emotional response help? Will it give us greater clarity or solve these mysteries faster? Will I be able to parse the data I need to parse more efficiently?” The shorter answer was training, but she didn’t want to go there. Compartmentalizing was a fact of her life. Shutting down was far easier than opening up, and it was a fight to let Steve and James in, even if they'd managed to sneak in under her defenses. It only meant she had to take greater care with her reactions.

“And the complicated part?” Peter had a panel open on the chest piece but he wasn’t staring at it but at her. “I mean I get staying calm—when everything went down in in DC with the power source and the fact an x-ray at the Washington Monument activated it like an explosive, I knew I had to calm down—or I wouldn’t have been able to get to my friends in time. It took everything I had to do that, and even after I saved them I was a wreck.”

“Emotional responses lead you to making mistakes.” She met his gaze evenly. “If you react instead of act—you run the risk of making the wrong choices, and you still have to live with the damage.”

Peter sobered. “Like the ferry.”

She nodded slowly. “You were lucky, Peter. No one died.”

He glanced down. “I know. But…Sergeant Barnes is your friend.”

He was so much more than that. “Yes.”

“You don’t want to know where he is? I mean—what if he’s somewhere that this stuff is going…you wouldn’t know.”

“True.” She glanced at the data and put a mark where she’d been reading before facing Peter again. “Peter—you haven’t come to this point yet, and I hope you never do. But someday you’re going to have to choose between saving one person, and saving a lot. To commit to one may mean you have to commit not doing the other. Even if that one person is a friend, and someone you care about.”

“That’s a really dark way of looking at the world.”

The world was a truly dark place. “Peter—if the containment on the CQ were to breach, and it was released in this room—you’re close to the door, and the CQ is heading straight for me. If you try to save me, there’s a very real chance the CQ gets out…and if it gets out, it can hurt far more people than me. If you fling yourself out the door and seal the lab, then you contain the CQ and me with it. I might die—I might be transformed. Nothing at all might happen. You don’t know. But you do know that I am one person, and there are far more than me out there. What do you do?”

Pain flickered across his expression. “I can probably get to you and get out fast enough to contain it.”

“You can’t.”

“You don’t know that…I’m fast enough.”

“You can’t, Peter. If you try to save me, the CQ will get out. That’s the scenario.”

“I don’t accept that.” He frowned. “I don’t accept that I would have to leave you to die.”

“Because you care?”

“Because I wouldn’t leave _anyone_ behind—I’d slam the door shut and lock us both in here if I had to and then really hope we could contain it before it ate us.” He was so damn earnest and young. “I know that’s probably not the answer you wanted.”

“It’s not about the answer I want, Peter—it’s about understanding why you’d make a choice and facing the reality you will someday have to make that kind of choice. To know whatever choice you make—you have to live with it. Like I said, there’s uncomplicated and there’s complicated. I tend not to react emotionally if I can help it. I work better when I’m rational, focused, and I can see the whole picture…”

The whole picture.

Leaning back, she turned her gaze back to the holo screens. The whole picture…

“Friday, take me back to the first entries in these files—the discovery.” It paged backwards to the beginning and the report written by an engineer aboard a research vessel working its way through the Arctic following specific routes…dating back decades. Roxxon provided the primary grants for the research—but they _weren’t_ the ones who actually sent him there.

Ukrainian transplant Doctor Nikolai Sklodowsovich formerly of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. actively pursued government and private sector grants beginning in 1989 when the project was terminated following the death of Dr. Wendy Lawson, until he garnered enough funds to hire a vessel and crew to begin his survey of the ocean floors in the Arctic Ocean following a series of very specific charts—all charts came with the doctor and only three charts were recorded.

Pulling the maps wide, she stared at the nautical surveys, then rearranged them carefully. Switching screens, she pulled up a nautical map of the Arctic Ocean then did grabs of the charts and dropped them on the map and waited for it to auto align.

She’d seen this map before. Easing the chair back, she blew the map up and stared at it. “Friday…Project Icepick—are those records still on the net?”

“I’m checking now, Ms. Romanoff…Project Icepick was not declassified or unencrypted when you dumped it to the net during the Project Insight incident. It is classified Level Nine SHIELD security clearance…”

“Use mine, Friday.”

“Decrypting now.” Then the maps expanded on the screen, multiple smaller boxes of data but she pushed those aside blowing up the map to be side by side with Dr. Sklodowsovich’s charts.

“What the hell is that?” Tony asked from a few steps behind her.

“Where they were looking for the magical mystery substance…on the same routes Howard mapped when he was searching for the Valkyrie…and SHIELD persisted when Nick kept the search alive—”

“That’s the route they were using to look for me?” Steve was a step behind Tony.

“Yep—and here…” She enhanced an area on the Project Icepick map. “This is exactly where Tony's dad located the Tesseract—he found it in ’45…not long after Steve went in the ice. Right there. And he combed back and forth and sent research vessel after vessel to return…but the topography of the ice, it was always shifting, and new layers came down.”

She spared a look at Steve and met his sober eyes. “It made it difficult to find the Valkyrie itself, but over time—and decades they located random items-a Hydra helmet, a weapon—a door…pieces of the vessel that sheered off.”

“But why were they using the map Mr. Stark’s father used to document his search for Captain America…” Peter had gone so quiet, but he'd been paying attention.

“I have no idea…unless it really is tied into the Tesseract itself…” She sat and leaned back, fingers interlocked behind her head as she stared at the maps. “Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was launched by Howard Stark shortly after SHIELD was officially founded in the 50s…prior to that it was the SSR. General Phillips, Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter are the three who officially transformed the SSR and repurposed it to SHIELD. From the time Stark found the Tesseract in ’45, he studied it closely—but he also kept it out of any government hands or records. His intention was to understand what Johann Schmidt had been doing with it, and to increase his own understanding of the cube itself, he saw it as a potential energy source—unlimited, clean energy.”

She glanced at Tony.

“He started Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. to further his understanding—but he lacked the technology to make it work, even though he must have mapped every inch of it, and done every conceivable test…”

“The energy source…the one he designed the expo to replicate…” Tony gaped at her.

“The element you created to replace palladium—it was based on his Tesseract research.” It was why Nick brought him the tapes. They knew the information had been carefully hidden, but Stark compartmentalized well, and while Nick liked to say he knew Howard Stark well, she didn’t think anyone in SHIELD outside of maybe Director Carter really knew Stark and he didn’t play well with others. Kind of like his son in some ways, Tony played well with a chosen few and he never played with those who tried to force things out of him.

“How do you know all this Nat?” Steve dropped into the seat next to hers.

“I read everything on the Tesseract after Clint was taken…I told you I do my research. The project closed in ’89, that’s two years before your father died—because of a massive accident in California involving Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. and the death of a Doctor Wendy Lawson—she’d been studying Tesseract energy and using it to create a new engine for a plane capable of achieving super orbital flight…and if she’d been successful may have officially launched us into the stars.”

Not that they were in any way ready for that. New York could have happened a hell of a lot sooner and they barely fended them off then.

“It keeps coming back to that damn cube,” Steve said with a harsh exhale.

“But it’s not here anymore,” Tony said. “And in the ‘90s, when Dr. Sneeze here was looking in the Arctic following Dad’s maps, it wasn’t there—so why dig that stuff up? It can’t have been easy harvesting it from the sea floor.”

“The Tesseract emits low levels of gamma radiation…it’s why Fury sent me to bring Bruce in, to help us look for it.”

Gamma Cannon.

Isodyne Industries.

“Zero matter….”

“What?”

“In the ‘40s, there was an incident at Isodyne Industries in Southern California involving dark energy or zero matter—another power source. A gamma ray cannon was involved…pretty sure it was built by your dad—but Gamma rays can knock electrons around like a bowling ball would bowling pin—which made it ideal for shutting down whatever they started—the point is…the research Bruce did later started in the ‘90s with Thaddeus Ross and his super soldier project.”

“You think they got the idea from the Tesseract?” Tony scratched at his goatee. “And note, at some point, you and I are going to talk about how you know so much about that incident in the 40s.”

“I don’t know what to think…but we have a lot of incidences that all seem to tie back to that one celestial object—and in turn that stuff got active when that same object was activated to open a portal in the sky that let the Chitauri in. Coincidence?”

“No.” Steve said firmly and Tony nodded his agreement.

“Dad’s notes on the energy source—he was very circumspect in how he wrote about it. Clear on the expectations but very vague on the specifics, and I don’t know if that’s because he was speculating or because he didn’t want the information to fall into the wrong hands.”

Across the room Peter had set the leg armor on the table and raised his hand.

“Are you raising your hand?” Tony asked blinking.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Peter said, lowering it. “But you were trying to find a way to neutralize the stuff—have you tried gamma radiation on it?”

That could be such a bad idea. She caught Steve’s questioning glance and lifted her shoulders. Far above her pay grade.

Tony narrowed his eyes and studied the material. “It’s not a wholly terrible idea.”

“It’s not a good one either,” Steve argued. “We saw what happened to Bruce when they played around with massive gamma ray exposure—”

“That was an accident, and it should have killed him and it didn’t.”

“It also didn’t make him the safest person to be around.” While Steve didn’t look at her, she could almost feel the weight of his regard. She’d had an up close and personal look at an enraged Hulk.

She would prefer to never experience that again. “Does it give off any kind of gamma signature?”

All of them looked at the containment units. “Low frequency,” Tony admitted. “Too low to register on a Geiger counter…”

“Like the Tesseract?” It was Steve’s turn to scowl. He really hated the cube. Of course—of all of them—his life had been the most affected by it.

“Similar,” Tony said, but the wheels were already turning in his head. “Banner got us started…”

“Yeah, he did,” Steve told him. He said, “Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. He planned to rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least so you could rule out a few places. Then he wanted to know where he could work and Nat took him to his lab.”

With a slow blink, she stared at Steve… “Eidetic memory?”

“Not so precise, but I was paying attention. You took him to his lab—and later Tony was in there working on it. We know he figured out the Tesseract was here…” Then they all stopped and stared at the containment units again. “The portal opened here.”

“Not here,” Tony said. “Up there.” He pointed to the roof. “And then three hundred feet above it.”

“So,” Peter said, folding his arms and chewing on the corner of his mouth. “We reach out to the different labs, fire up the spectrometers—this stuff may give off a low radiation signature, but we’re talking how much of that stuff was taken? Wouldn’t a concentration of it all together give off a bigger signal?”

“Sound theory.” Tony’s gaze had gone distant. He was already calculating in his head. “We need Bruce’s tracking algorithm—Baby Girl, JARVIS kept it on a backup server…can you track that down?”

“On it Boss, and I’m reaching out to multiple labs—offering them compensation in exchange for calibrating their spectrometers and looping me into the results as part of an SI project.”

That could work and kept their intentions cloaked. Steve brushed his fingers across the back of her neck, and she turned to glance at him. He motioned toward the door, and raised his eyebrows. With a nod, she glanced back at the screen.

“Hang on a sec Cap,” Tony said as she and Steve rose. “Peter, you finished the last tweaks on the armor?”

“Pretty much, Mr. Stark—we need to do a test on the pressure.”

“Great, Steve this is for you.” Tony motioned to it. “The kid can hit like a truck which means he can give the added pressure to the exterior of the armor that you apply to the interior. Care to take it down to the testing lab and give it a trial run?”

The armor was for Steve? Maybe Steve’s confusion reflected in her own eyes because Tony smirked.

“You really didn’t think I was going to let you go toe to toe with the sludge on the ground again without protecting you?” He focused on Cap, but she didn’t miss the flicker of a glance to her. Something dark and knotted loosened in her chest.

“Thanks Tony.”

“Yep…go do a fitting. Peter, we need to run it through all the tests…that armor has to hold and the seals can’t break. Got it?”

“Got it.” Peter grinned. “It’s going to do the job.”

Steve glanced at her and she nodded. “Go, this is important…”

“Yeah—this is important too.” He brushed his hand lightly to her lower back, a request instead of a nudge and she nodded. “Two minutes guys.”

They were out of Tony’s lab and in his closet, then his bedroom. She and Steve shared a look then without comment, they headed out, down the stairs and then onto the deck. The cold air was bracing after the lab and folded her arms against the chill before facing him.

“You okay?” he asked, slipping his hands under her elbows to cup them and then easing forward to wrap his arms around her. He was warm and a bulwark against the chill.

“Yes…” Though she could have sounded more convincing.

“Angel,” he called her on it with one word.

“I have to lock it down,” she told him. “I don’t like the kill switch. I don’t like that we don’t know where he is. I don’t like that Clint went dark. That said—I know there were and are probably good reasons for all of it. But this…stuff…”

“It takes precedence.” Of course he understood. “They’re in Montana.” He studied her expression, as if looking for something.

She blew out a breath and the fog of it blurred the air in front of her for a moment. “Any idea why?”

“No,” Steve admitted, then sighed as his shoulders drooped. “I hoped you might…”

The Guest House was rumored to be in Montana, secured in a facility deep inside a mountain originally built for nuclear research by the SSR, but she’d only been there once that she could recall and Phil hadn’t let her _see_ the route. “No…so maybe he needed some time. He’s been—pretty trapped here too.” Trapped and secured except for a handful of grueling missions—including Louisiana. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken him on that job…”

“What?” Steve frowned at her.

She shook her head. “Just—he seemed to be doing well before that and it got pretty ugly. Maybe he wasn’t ready for that and I pushed him.”

Eyes closed, he practically vibrated with whatever mental tally he made.

“Hey…” It was her turn to ease him. They had too much in front of them to afford the mental and emotional distractions, no matter how badly she wanted to be distracted. Or aboard a quinjet and on her way just to get eyes on him and make sure James was okay. “It’s going to be okay, you know that right?” She unlocked her arms and pressed her hands to his chest. “He’s going to be fine. We keep—thinking we have to protect him against everything…but he’s made remarkable leaps the last few weeks.”

“Yeah, because you’re there,” Steve told her flatly. “And right now, you’re not with him.”

“But Clint _is_.” And that fact alone steadied her. “I wouldn’t have made that transition to SHIELD without Clint, without him forcing normalcy down my throat with a cheerful smile and a pain in the ass attitude. If it can’t be either of us—then Clint is the perfect person to be there.”

The door opened behind Steve and he half-turned when her attention flicked past him. Tony stared at them, hands in his pockets. “We can split up…you two go to Montana, I’ll deal with the sludge…”

“No,” she said in the same breath as Steve.

“You guys sure?” Real worry reflected in Tony’s eyes, worry and exhaustion. He was pushing himself again. Then again, when wasn’t he? “I should have—I should have kept a better eye on them.”

With a squeeze to Steve’s arms, she pushed away and headed to Tony. At the other man’s wince, she slowed. “First—no matter what security you put in place if Clint and James really wanted to go, they would have gone. Second, I have to believe they have a good reason to do what they’re doing. Nothing about their exit from the Tower suggests duress.” That single fact grounded her enough to face the current problem instead of crossing the country at speed. “Third, I trust them—and while I may disagree with the kill switch, especially the fact _none_ of you told me.” None of them, including James. An issue for another day. “I trust you, too.”

“I’m not apologizing for it,” Tony told her flatly. “Guy might be coming around, but with his history I’m not taking risks with you.”

It really wasn’t Tony’s choice to make, then again she hadn’t stopped him from trying to build layer after layer of security around her. “I’m not asking for your apology,” she told him, and smiled at the surprise flickering across his expression. “I don’t have to like everything you do to know you mean well or that you have our best interests at heart. I would, however, appreciate more of a head’s up on the choices you’re making especially if they threaten someone else.”

“Assume they threaten anyone who’s ever tried to hurt you.” Tony spread his hands. “What can I say—I’m a thorough guy.”

Steve said, “And to be fair Angel—it was what Bucky wanted. He wanted on that mission and around you, but he didn’t trust himself anymore than Tony did. I’m not saying you’re wrong to be irked with us—with him. But no one forced him to do this, I promise you.”

Yes. She knew that. Steve would never do that to James. She knew that Tony—even after everything he learned about James’ involvement with his parents’ deaths—had done far more than anyone could have reasonably expected. She promised them silently she did know.

“The difference…” she shifted her stance when the words caught in her throat so she could see both of them, then tried again. “The difference is I know what it is to not trust my mind. There are still so many pieces of me missing, scattered to the wind and time. Maybe I’ll put them together—and maybe they make me someone you can’t trust again. Or maybe I don’t…and I’ll always be a broken monster. The thing is—when you’re a monster, it’s a whole lot easier to let everyone think less of you because you know you don’t even deserve that much.” James, of the two of them, should never have to feel that way.

Denial crystallized in both their expressions and she held up a hand.

“Don’t,” she told them both, but then she focused on Steve. “I know who I am _now_. Most days I even like me. At the same time, I’m a realist. James hasn’t always been James—sometimes he’s Bucky and sometimes he’s the Soldier. Neither of you have ever had to live like that. I am so profoundly grateful for the fact. But I have…and you never know, after what we found out in Russia, maybe the double crossing thing isn't the only problem in my DNA.”

“Bullshit,” Tony spit the word out. “That’s some bullshit Red.”

Steve leveled an entirely different look at her that promised another conversation was forthcoming, but the door behind Tony opened again and Peter leaned out with a wince. “Sorry—to interrupt.” His gaze slid to her then jumped away. Great what had the kid heard? Another fire she’d have to deal with later. “But we might have something…maybe…me and Friday that is. Well mostly Friday.”

“We’re not done with this,” Tony warned her and she let it go as they followed Peter back inside. Once back in Tony’s closeted labratory, Friday had a map of the U.S. up and various spectrographic readings.

Low level gamma radiation was a pain to map out. It had taken Bruce and Tony hours—with Tony’s equipment and Bruce’s tracking algorithm. “How close is this signature to the Tesseract’s itself?”

Because they could be different.

“Like the difference between an acoustic guitar and an electric model,” Tony offered as he leaned forward.

That was a fairly distinct range. “This could take days…”

“Possibly,” Tony admitted. “But what other alternative do we have?”

Remy had gotten the word out to hunt for the trucks, and he’d update her as soon as he had anything. Friday was running scans on the highways…but if they didn’t go far or if they…if they didn’t actually take to the highways but went to the port instead, they could really be looking for a needle in an infinite haystack.

“Captain Rogers?” Peter was saying, he’d gathered up the armor. “You ready to go test this?”

“Call me Steve kid, and yeah…” Steve’s hand rested against her nape, just the barest of pressure but a reminder he was there. “Keep me in the loop,” he said before his touch vanished and he followed Peter out of the lab.

She glanced from where Tony hunched over his readouts to the holo display she’d been studying. Why would they have wanted to follow Howard Stark’s path across the Arctic? He’d _found_ the Tesseract. What scant evidence they found of the Valkyrie came much later—so why the sudden leap to search the region?

Settling back in, she pulled up Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. records and started reading. So much of that was redacted, but Tony had pulled copies of everything she’d dumped on the net. She hadn’t decrypted everything, and her level nine clearance only got her so far. Nearly everything in the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. files was marked level ten.

The accident involving Dr. Lawson remained very light on the details. She’d been aboard a test flight with a pilot assigned to the project. They were pushing an experimental engine. An unknown system failure resulted in the crash and subsequent death of Lawson, and most likely the test pilot, but the debris was scattered over several miles and the subsequent engine explosion seemed to have disintegrated bio organic matter.

Bio organic matter.

Paging through the report, she looked for the location of the crash itself. Redacted. Primary base of operations. Redacted. Not New Mexico. The 1989 base was eventually decommissioned. Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. reactivated after the Battle of Puente Antiguo—only difference was that instead of partnering with the Air Force as Howard Stark had designed the original operation, SHIELD kept the operation in house under the orders of…Alexander Pierce.

Those were all _after_ the fact.

She returned to the original research in the 1980s. The Tesseract was in the custody of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.

“Tony…”

“Yeah?” He glanced up from his computer screen.

“The element—that you made because of your dad’s notes…”

“What about it?”

She considered how to frame it. “He was able to speculate an element from his study of the Tesseract, but he couldn’t create it himself…”

“No,” Tony said, leaning forward on his elbows and studying her. “He didn’t have the technology. It required atom collisions to be performed at speed, in a contained field, then transmuted when introduced to a third element…Even in the mid-80s that would have been a challenge. The first collider capable of smashing antiprotons happened in 1968 and the work would have overloaded it and probably blown the whole operation to hell and back. The super collider development took a big leap in the 70s, but the first stable super collider didn’t happen until the late 80s, and we didn’t perfect it until nearly 2000. Still—the first ARC reactor I built which utilized those principles, was a far smaller scale to what it can do now.”

“Because of the element…”

Tony nodded once. Then they both looked at the material. “You’re thinking that’s why they were looking for this stuff. They had some of Dad’s plans but not…”

“Not the actual formula. I mean it’s a guess, and I need to figure out more about this Dr. Wendy Lawson—she had access to the Tesseract and was building some kind of experimental engine capable of super-orbital flight. If you believe the propaganda buried in the proposals for funding—if she were successful it could have advanced the space race decades—we could have advanced space ships, right now.”

“The question is the _Lost in Space_ kind or the far cooler _trans-warp_ drives of _Star Trek_.”

“I’m pretty sure you would have called it _Stark Tech_ , because you do like to put your name on things.”

“Haha. So funny. It hurts.” He paused. “Then again… if they’d brought us in on it…” Tony smiled. “Still it has a nice ring to it…maybe I should build us a constitution class ship of our own.”

As funny a joke as that might sound to others… “Maybe not right now.”

“Tomorrow,” Tony said with a grin, then sobered and highlighted an area on one of the files she was reading. “What’s this?”

“Samples…okay this is closer to what I was trying to find. The Lawson engine had some kind of critical failure, the plane crashed and it exploded. The notes said Lawson’s body was recovered, but the pilot’s wasn’t however the explosion had taken out bio organic matter.”

Tony went rigid next to her. “You’re thinking…” He tapped a spot on the form, then enhanced it. “Transformed rocks and other silicone based material—low radiant signatures—low level gamma radiation. Organic matter…not present. Son of a bitch.”

“That’s why.”

They locked gazes and Tony nodded. “Whatever happened with the engine transformed the environment around it. The engine was based off the Tesseract inspired technology—or maybe the Tesseract itself.” He pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“After the accident, they shut down the project, shutter it. Scientists talk—someone there had to have some idea of what she was doing, of the fall out after. He wants to find more samples to study because the military is locking them out of the accident site.” Each piece slotted in neatly.

“He’s not getting any support from the project, and maybe not even from the military—or maybe he’s getting shadow support, under the table, but he still needs financing to find more material affected by the Tesseract…” Tony continued, picking up her thread. “Where else better to look than where Dad found the thing in the first place?”

“It takes time—a hell of a lot of time to track it down, then even find a way to remove it.” She grasped the edges of the wireframe and dragged it wider. “Now you’ve got the private sector funding a scientist on a mission—what his mission actually _was_ is questionable, but they find that stuff…and they’ve spent a hell of a lot of money and it does…nothing like they’re expecting.” Some of the records indicated smashing the atoms of the material, trying to break it down to its component parts. The fact it had DNA at all was an anomaly because it didn’t seem organic, yet it was. Non carbon based which suggested extraterrestrial origins…

“Oh shit.”

“What?” Tony narrowed his gaze at her.

“We know it’s a portal. The Tesseract, we know it _opens_ portals.” That stuff wasn’t from Earth and…

“Oh. Shit.” He twisted to look at it. “You think whenever Cap and Red Skull were fighting—it activated the Tesseract.”

No, she knew it did. Only they hadn’t really thought about it before. “Steve said it disintegrated Red Skull…but we saw what it did to Thor and Loki when it took them back to Asgard. It sucked them upward—like they were being shredded.”

“And in 1945—that’s going to look like disintegration. Hell if I didn’t know what it was, I’d have thought the same thing.” Tony had begun to pace. “So Red Skull actually activated it, opened a portal—for seconds? Nano-seconds? He gets sucked up…and the Tesseract falls, burning its way through the hull of the plane to plunge into the ocean.”

“Doors open both ways…what if it wasn’t fully closed when it fell?”

The thought nauseated her.

“So this is some kind of alien life–or property, it fell through and ended up on the ocean floor where it lay for however many years before they came and dug it up…and then…”

“Tortured it.” If it were sentient of any kind, and the very idea it might be alive would suggest that it was. Then tearing it apart to make it work for them. A throbbing sensation bloomed behind her right eye. “The CQ-D, collapsing faster and faster to explode…suiciding because it knew it couldn’t get free? Or somehow it knew it wasn’t whole?”

The unease in her gut turned into a churning burn. “The rest lashes out for the same reason. It’s trying to make itself whole, so it bonds with anything organic around it.”

“That’s some really dark shit,” Tony admitted.

“As one experiment to another, I sympathize with it.” She certainly knew what it was to be torn apart. “Maybe that’s why it likes me…”

Tony turned his gaze on her. “Friday—scan Red. Low level gamma radiation readings.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You took a bath in it,” he told her. “You shoved Loki’s scepter right into Selvig’s device to shut down the Tesseract.”

The weight of the staff in her hands, shoving it against the field, the burn as it pushed back and leaning into it. It made her teeth ache, but… “I was fine after.”

“Sure—”

“Detectable levels of low frequency gamma radiation present,” Friday announced. “Well below harmful levels, but consistent. No cellular degradation detected in blood samples. Postulate alterations to Ms. Romanoff’s DNA with serum enhancements may have compensated for any potential radiation sickness at initial exposure. Uncertain if levels have decreased from initial exposure to now…Ms. Romanoff’s medical records are spotty.”

“You didn’t see a doctor after New York.” Tony flattened his hands on the table and shook his head. “You avoided them because of the serum.”

Tony knew the answer so she didn’t have to explain it. “The stuff from Greenland, the intact sample. It reacted to Steve—minutely.”

“Because he was near the Tesseract when it activated on the Valkyrie…but you were…how long did it take you to close the portal?”

Forever, it had felt like. “Fifteen—twenty seconds. Maybe thirty tops.” More like a decade or two. The world had…paused.

“You won’t like this…” He began.

“You already have my blood samples.”

“ I know, but I didn’t know what I was looking for then…maybe I do now and…”

“Boss. We’ve got a lock on one truck; the presence of low frequency gamma radiation is confirmed. It’s moving east on I-40 in Tennessee.”

One truck.

“Red…”

“You have to go.”

His expression tightened. “Friday, let Cap know we’re about to deploy and I’m heading down to double-check the armor.”

“You guys are going to need help.”

“Can’t be you—and not because of your status. If that stuff reacts to you, it’s going to go straight for you and I only have armor for Cap. I’ll get some built for you.”

She made a face.

“You'll love it, you'll see. It will have all the toys.” Tony teased her, then said, “We’re good, right? You and me?”

“We’re fine Tony—I’ll get over it.”

“You said you were disappointed.” The quiet hanging off the end of that statement poked at her.

“I know, but we do that—you and me. We disappoint each other. Then we get over it.”

“Yeah…” But still he hesitated.

“Go,” she said with a gentle push, then pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Go save the world and come back so we can keep getting over it.”

A grin curved his mouth. “Staying here?”

“For now. More research.” But if they could get this locked down…

“We’ll figure this out and then go get your other boyfriend, Red.”

She chuckled. “Goodbye Tony.”

“Hey—I’m a good boyfriend wrangler…”

She made a shooing motion.

“Friday rouse the troops…” Then he was gone.

Not fifteen minutes later, he and Steve were both out, the team having arrived by quinjet to pick them up. Peter had rejoined her in the lab and she kept one eye on the tracking map Friday provided her so she could monitor their status.

The silence between she and Peter trickled along, her attention on the research. There was so much to read but sometimes all they needed was the right detail, the one thread to pull. Aware that Peter kept glancing at her, she finally said, “What Peter?”

“Can we—do the privacy conversation again?”

“Friday—voice activated mode please, emergency protocol in effect, monitor the status of the lab, but not the conversation.” They couldn’t turn off Friday in here fully. It would just be a bad idea.

“Understood, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Hit me, Peter. What’s up?”

“I’ve seen that stuff before.” He motioned to the CQ items and she turned away from the research. He had her full attention.

“What?”

“At Oscorp…field trip. You know when…” He motioned to himself.

Oscorp.

Three blocks away.

“Tell me everything.”


	43. Spiraling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter, Wanda, and Clint face very different challenges...

**Chapter Forty-Three**

**Spiraling**

**Peter**

 

 

When Natasha told him to tell her everything, he never imagined that they would be walking through the front doors of Oscorp two hours later. Well, she was walking through the front door of Oscorp, he was planted on the side of the building, and fifteen floors up while Karen accessed the glasses Natasha had slipped on after she calibrated them.

She had literally become _someone_ else and didn’t even need a veil to do it.

“Good morning Miss,” the guard at the front desk greeted her as she approached. She’d done something to her red hair to darken it, then pulled it up in this deft twist. With the dark brown contacts, she already looked _different_ , but then she used a little bit of putty to give her nose a slightly more rounded look and gave her chin a more angular one. The change in hairstyle and the addition of glasses all modified her look to something just  _not_ Natasha.

Then she shifted her posture, the way she held her head, even the way she gazed at him and it was weird—cool weird sure, but also eerie. With cosmetics—and he’d watched her do this part and he still couldn’t tell what she’d done exactly—she altered the shape of her nose a little more, gave her cheeks a fuller look, and even shaded her eyes so they seemed more narrow and then with a twist of lipstick, thinned her lips.

Or maybe he just imagined things.

“Hi,” she drawled out the word with the touch of southern accent and Peter gaped. “My name is Naomi Roehmer, I’m so sorry I’m late.” The breathless quality to her voice made him want to laugh. She was pouring it on a little thick, wasn’t she?

“I’m sorry?” The guard rose, his expression seemed polite and while Peter couldn’t see Natasha’s face, he didn’t miss the way the guy looked at her. Guys looked at Aunt May like that—it was uncomfortable and more than a little disturbing.

“Oh, where are my manners.” She extended her hand and there were three rings visible in Peter’s view. The guard stared at her hand then her, before he took her hand carefully. The guy had to be six feet? Maybe a hair over that. He was bulkily built, broad shoulders and a thick neck. He reminded Peter of the jocks at his old school. “I’m practically a wreck.”

Peter’s viewpoint swung down as she smoothed a hand over her slacks, then back up again. She’d dressed in a short-sleeved white button down shirt that she had left the top three buttons loose on. The shirt tapered to her waist and tucked into black slacks, then she’d worn these booted shoes with chunky heels that added about two and a half inches of height. Then the guard was in her line of sight again, and his gaze was definitely not on her face.

Creep.

“I’ve literally just crawled out of the back of the smelliest taxi after a brutal drive from LaGuardia. I always heard traffic in this city is a nightmare, and I used to think Los Angeles was bad.”

The guard chuckled. “Well you look great, so I don’t think you have to worry about there ma’am. What can I do for you?” His eyes didn’t lift from her chest until the very last word and Peter wanted to throw up in his mouth.

So. Gross.

“I have an appointment with…” She hesitated and pulled up her phone, the screen showed the security cracker she was running was at seventy-two percent, they would have access in a minute,

“Karen,” Peter said softly, even if Karen would mute him from Natasha’s earpiece. “Can we make that program run faster?”

“It’s running at optimum speeds, Peter. We will be fully in their system in the next two minutes.”

“Okay.”

“…sorry, here it is. Dr. Curt Connors? I know I’m late, I was supposed to be here thirty minutes ago, and I am so terribly sorry. Could you let Dr. Connors know that Naomi Roehmer from Roxxon is here, and I’ve brought the samples he requested.” For that last part she lifted the small briefcase she carried, it was lead lined and Peter still wasn’t sure the samples they’d ‘created’ were going to pass inspection even if Natasha insisted they didn’t have to…they were a gate key she told him, nothing more.

“We’re at ninety percent, Peter. I’m about to bring up all the security screens. Be prepared.”

He appreciated Karen’s warning. Sometimes the sheer amount of data she could generate and display could overwhelm him. “I’m ready.”

What if they turned her away before she got into the security system? What if the guard wanted to see in the case? Why would Dr. Connors want to see anyone who wasn’t actually on his appointment calendar?

Natasha had simply ruffled his hair and said, “Go put on your suit and get ready. We have to do this stealthily, which means you have to get there and up on the building without attracting attention.”

He would be outside, she was going to be inside. And she worried about _him_ attracting attention?

“Do you have your ID with you?” The guard asked as he typed something on his computer. The ninety percent made a leap to one hundred and the screens began to open on his HUD. Belatedly, he realized the hold up had been cleared when the guy entered his password.

Cool.

“Of course,” she laughed, then began to dig through her purse. Keys landed on the counter, followed by a compact, then some candy, a wrapped tampon—Peter winced and looked to a different screen as more items jingled and clinked onto the marble counter top. “Oh here we go. Sorry. I told you—I’m a mess.”

“You’re just fine, Ms. Roehmer, just fine.”

“Thank you—Oscar, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Oscar Simmons.”

Pete winced and glanced back at the screen, the guy had her wallet in his hand but he wasn’t looking at the ID at all. Just at Natasha. What was _wrong_ with this dude?

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Oscar Simmons. You must be the nicest New Yorker ever. I just cannot get over it.” And what the hell was wrong with her? Was she… simpering? Was that the word? He’d read it in books but never heard it aloud before. It made the hair on his body stand on end.

Ewww.

“The pleasure is all mine,” _Oscar_  crooned. Crooned. Peter was definitely going to throw up. He needed to remember he had the mask on. He handed back over the wallet, and then took her hand in a quick handshake. “How long are you in the city for?”

“Well that really depends on Dr. Connors.” She giggled.

Giggled!!

“If I have to call my boss and tell him I blew this meeting…I don't know how that will go…” She let it trail off sadly.

“I’m sure it will be fine, let me track Dr. Connors down. Between you and me, Naomi…it’s all right if I call you Naomi isn’t it?”

“I would love for you to call me, Naomi.” Her arm came into view, she was leaning on the counter and Oscar's gaze kept shifting to her chest and not her face.

Perv.

Some part of Peter hoped the guy made a move on her. Natasha would break him in half.

The other part really hoped he didn’t cause—gross.

Oscar picked up the phone from its cradle and grinned. “Well, as I was saying, between you and I—Dr. Connors tends to get caught up in his work and loses all track of time. I can fix this for you.”

“Oh could you?” She sounded so grateful. “I would be forever in your debt.”

“My pleasure—and if you’re free later, I know a couple of great restaurants in Chinatown you might enjoy.”

“Really?” The breathless quality in her voice was back and Peter made a gagging face.

Karen cleared her throat. “I think Ms. Romanoff wanted us to get eyes on floors 22 and 23.”

Oh. Right. Crap. “Yeah—okay is Dr. Connors actually in his office?” It had been Dr. Connors who hosted their field trip—even though the guy had clearly been distracted and he’d walked them through several great projects before Peter slipped away to look at the labs they kept bypassing.

“No, he’s in a laboratory on 23, it looks like he’s working in a hazmat suit.” The camera zoomed in to show Dr. Connors extracting liquid from one beaker using a dropper then adding it to another poised over a Bunsen burner. “The phone is ringing but he isn’t answering…wait, there he goes.”

“Can we track him toward the phone?” Because the doctor had to leave his lab and Oscorp secured labs internally and externally. Codes were required no matter which way they went through the door.

“Already doing it…”

“Just another moment, Naomi,” the guard said, a smile in his voice. “Dr. Connors may be in one of his labs, and he always takes time to get to the phone there.”

“I’m wonderful right here, and you’re such a sweetheart. Thank you.” If Natasha never spoke like that again it would be too soon. The simpering notes in her voice just grated on him.

“Got it,” Karen said almost smugly as the doc entered his code. It was the same one he used on the outer door, and then he was too the phone.

“Okay, great. The lab I went into was actually on 24.” He’d gone up the stairs. Some of his memories were a little fuzzy, maybe because he’d spiked such a dangerous fever afterwards. But he’d diverted up to 24 because he wanted to see the projects capable of altering the future of mankind—a catchphrase for Oscorp materials—and not just all the _safe_ and bland stuff Dr. Connors had been showing him. He’d wanted to see the Oz project. Maybe if he’d never hacked their computers and read all the files they had, maybe, just maybe, he would have hung out with his class.

Instead, he discovered Dr. Stillwell’s lab. Dr. Stillwell and Dr. Connors were partners, and they shared three levels of Oscorp for their work. The reconmbinator was genius. Especially if they could replicate the super soldier serum—it would be breakthrough science, the kind of stuff Peter really wanted to do…

If he closed his eyes, he could see the pathway up the stairs to the door. He’d entered the code he’d seen the guards enter when their escort brought them to the 22nd level. Happily, the code worked and he’d slipped out onto 24, and it was a maze of hallways, labs, and displays. It smelled like ozone, and air scrubbers. The temperature was cold, he half imagined he could see his breath.

“Room 2407,” Peter said suddenly. “That’s where I saw the CQ material.”

“Dr. Connors,” the guard said and Peter almost jumped, he’d half-forgotten he was listening in to Natasha’s discussion with the guard. Shaking his head, he couldn’t escape the crawling sensation along his back that something was wrong. “Yes, sir, sorry to bother you…I have a Naomi Roehmer here to see you from Roxxon…”

“Karen can we hear Dr. Connors side of this conversation?”

“Who?” Dr. Connors’ voice came through his speakers.

“Ms. Roehmer…she is running late for her…two o’clock with you.”

“Dammit,” Connors made a face then checked his watch, which he couldn’t see inside the suit. “Fine fine—send her up to 23, and apologize to her that I may be a minute. I’m actually working in the lab…”

“I can change and meet him if that would speed things up,” Natasha was saying, a cooing note in his voice. “Totally my fault for being late, I don’t want to drag him away from his work, and the CQ samples would be better opened in a lab.”

If Peter hadn’t been watching Connors via the security cameras he would have missed the sudden stillness in the other man’s expression. “She brought the samples _with_ her?” He snapped to the guard, but it was the tightness around his eyes and the flatness of his mouth that sent another crawling sensation of _wrongness_ over his skin.

“Yes, sir.” The guard’s expression went from genial to a little more circumspect. Peter flicked his gaze back and forth between them.

“Actually send her directly to 24, tell her the clean room will be the first door on the right.”

“Right away sir.”

“Karen, connect me with her…” He gave it a beat then said in a whisper. “Natasha, something is up with Connors. He wasn’t happy to hear you brought the samples with you and—I can’t explain it, but his whole face changed. We have the security feed access, that’s enough right?”

But she didn’t answer him, of course the guard was right in front of her leading her to a bank of elevators that required his code—Peter memorized the number—his keycard—which they wouldn’t have—and then he held the doors so she could step inside but his positioning meant Natasha had to brush past him.

“What a creep!” The exclamation slipped out before he remembered he was on comms. Dammit. But the guy was a total perv.

“Dr. Connors said the clean room is the first door on the right when you arrive. If you wait there, I’m sure he’ll come to you.” The guard loomed close enough Peter actually tried to lean away from the monitors on his HUD as if the guy was about to breathe on him. “My shift ends at five,” he told her, smiling. “I can hang out until six though if you think your meeting will be done by then.”

“Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing,” Natasha cooed at him again and Peter made a hacking noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t you worry, if I’m down before six, you’re the first person I plan to see.”

“Great.” Then the elevator closed.

“We have control of the security monitoring systems,” Karen announced. “Communications secure, Ms. Romanoff.”

Two.

“Thank you Karen,” she said in her familiar rasp so much better than that awful accented cooing. “Are you all right Peter?”

“Me?” His voice jumped an octave. “I’m fine. Why?”

“You were coughing,” came the dry response.

Five.

“Just fine…the guard was all kinds of creepy.”

“Well, some guys are like that,” she said it so matter of factly. “What was wrong with Connors’ face?”

Eight.

“I don’t know how to explain it…he was very distracted and annoyed by the call, then—then he was angry I think. Really angry.” Granted, he’d only met Dr. Connors for like thirty minutes, and most of that was tour related, but the genial guy he’d met that day was not at all in evidence on the security monitors.

Eleven.

“What’s he doing now?” From this angle, he could see Natasha fine. She stood straight, the briefcase in front of her and braced against her thighs as she covered one hand over the other on the handle.

Fourteen.

“He’s…” He skimmed the views they have. “Karen where is he?”

“I’m scanning, Peter,” Karen said. “He must be located in a video blind spot.”

“Natasha…I have a really bad feeling about this.”

Seventeen.

“Your turn for _Star Wars_ quotes?” Amusement colored her tone, and he blinked away from flipping through the different monitoring screens. Clinging to the side of the building, he’d chosen a strut that didn’t face a window directly and the building didn’t have another tower close enough to see him where he hung. Most people didn’t look up anyway, and he would vanish against the gray glass. The sun had vanished behind a bank of clouds, and the wind picked up, but the heater in his suit kept him from shivering.

The faintest hint of thunder rumbled in the distance. “Oh crap,” he muttered.

Twenty.

“More explicit descriptions than expletives please.”

“Just hoping it doesn’t rain…Natasha you’re almost to 24. Karen can turn the elevator around. Having eyes inside is enough right?” The creeping sensation coiled around his spine tighter and tighter.

Twenty-two.

“Breathe, malen'kiy pauk.” The quiet command dispelled some of the tension, but his gut still churned. “We need to confirm they have the other samples and whether they are actually involved in this…I can’t send the others if I don’t have visual confirmation.”

“Please be careful…”

Twenty-four.

The elevator doors parted and she stepped out onto the same dimly lit, ozone scented floor he recalled. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. The fat square white tiled floor and ceiling reminded him of some abstract chessboard. But they weren’t playing a game—even if Natasha would probably be the Queen. The Queen could move anywhere on the board she wanted.

The floor itself offered no directions. If his memory was correct, from where she stood, it was a long, seemingly endless corridor, populated by doors and the occasional observation window. The labs on that floor were all secure…yay him for having lifted Dr. Connors security code. He’d repeated it to Natasha so she’d have it, but it had been more than a year, so there was a solid chance the code had change.

That or Dr. Connors was really careless with his security and the guy didn’t strike him that way.

First door on the right opened without a code at all, and then Nat stepped inside and Karen switched the monitor to…an empty room.

“Karen…”

“I’m scanning Peter.”

“But Karen she just went in the clean room.” The images split. The hall where Natasha _had_ been and the empty room—it was a clean room. There were hanging suits and pressurized doors, and separate venting systems, probably a closed loop system designed to filtrate the air.

“Why aren’t we bringing up that screen?”

“Dr. Connors,” Natasha’s voice came through the speakers, but they still didn’t have her on video. What. The. Hell.

Peter tilted his head back, it was hard to determine which floor you were on via the outside of the building but the distance suggested fifteen floors up, so he started climbing for twenty-four immediately.

“The clean room feed appears to be on a loop.” Karen sounded perturbed. “I’m working to disrupt the loop and get us live footage.”

“Thank you.”

“Ms. Roehmer.” Dr. Connors didn’t sound remotely friendly. “You’ll put the case down and raise your hands please.”

“Dr. Connors, I’m not very comfortable with you pointing a gun at me.” Her southern accent didn’t miss a beat. “I know I’m late for an appointment, but that’s an extreme reaction even back home.”

“Put the case on the floor, Ms. Roehmer, don’t make me ask you again. I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish coming here, but I can guarantee you, you’re not getting it.” If Connors had the gun why did he sound scared?

He peered around the edge of a window, and checked. Twentieth floor. Getting closer. The elevators were in the central core of the building, so that meant the clean room was nearer to that than one of the windows, but he could get to twenty-four and get in, then find her if he had to.

There was a light thunk. “Dr. Connors, whatever you think this is, I would like to point out that I came in through the front door and met with your security guard. You invited me up here.”

“I did...slide the case over here—gently!”

The skittering sound of the case across tile rifled through the speakers, and then there was a bang and Peter jerked. “Natasha!?!”

A hacking cough, then a groan. “Well, you did ask me to slide it over,” Natasha’s droll tone penetrated her southern accent. “Good night, Dr. Connors.” There was the sound of sharp electrical discharge, then the coughing ceased.

“Natasha?” Peter tried again, he was at twenty-four and checking through the glass—that he couldn’t see through on this floor. _C’mon!_

“I’m fine malen'kiy pauk, relax. Dr. Connors was obviously expecting me to be someone else entirely. Which is saying something. You said the video feeds are on a loop in here?”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff. Most of the twenty-fourth floor appears to be on a loop. All the labs I’m tiling through are empty, or inactive. But the power usage on that floor decries all of that.”

“Okay…then I’m suiting up and going in. Can you track down which lab had the Oz project as well as the one with the CQ if you can?”

“Running through their file system, this may take a moment.”

Peter waited for Karen to finish before he said, “I thought we were just here for the CQ.”

“We are, but you said you saw something _like_ the CQ while you were and when you stumbled into Stillwell’s lab. There’s a chance they are one and the same, and they may not be labeling the material CQ.”

“Oh.” That made sense. “What happened to Dr. Connors?”

“Flash bang, and a little knock out gas and a helpful dose of a widow's bite to guarantee he stayed out. And to set your mind at ease, the gun is unloaded.” He’d heard the slide of the magazine and the discharge of a bullet being emptied out of the chamber.

“It might be now, but it wasn't…so why are you implying otherwise?”

A soft laugh drifted through the speakers. “Testing you malen'kiy pauk, testing. Very good. What else did you hear?”

“He was really upset, and he might have had the gun but he was more scared of you than angry.”

“Yes, he was. That tells me Connors has at least some idea of what Roxxon is up to, or maybe is a part of it, too. Either way, he was expecting me to attack him.” The wondering note in her voice made him laugh.

“Well…strictly speaking…”

“I wasn’t going to attack him if I didn’t have to, Peter,” the gentle reprimand only made his smile wider.

“But you would still have done it, so maybe he was smart to be wary.”

“Wary is one thing.” There was a sound of metal on metal, then a hiss, and her voice sounded oddly louder. She’d suited up. “But he was genuinely terrified. You’re still outside of the building where I told you to stay right?”

Peter glanced down below, then turned to plant his back to the wall hands and feet gripping neatly. “I am…”

“Good. Don’t come in, I’m not sure how much of your suit filters toxins and other compounds and we’re still working with an uncertainty principle about the CQ.”

A door opened, then hissed closed. But the cameras still didn’t show Natasha on them. Very frustrating. “What if you get into trouble?”

“Then I’ll get out of it,” she told him. “Keep monitoring the elevators, we think I’m alone on this floor and Connors is secured. But if someone comes up, it would be nice to know about it before I trip over them.”

“I have it covered, Ms. Romanoff,” Karen assured her. “The Oz project is in lab 2405. The project is listed as decommission, and that lab is for cold storage only. It is located directly next to 2407 where Peter indicated he saw the CQ material, however—I see nothing in the Oscorp database resembling the CQ designation.”

“Okay, let’s try cross-referencing anything to do with Roxxon, Arctic, fossil free fuel, alternative energy…possibly 084. Don’t think Oscorp did a lot of work with SHIELD, but I’ve been surprised before. On my way to 2407 now.”

Another hissing door. “You took his keycard.” That it took that long to dawn on him was kind of embarrassing.

“Yes I did. Work smarter, not harder…”

Peter snickered. “I think that applies to actual work, not stealing and spying.”

“What makes you think spying or stealing isn’t _actual_ work?”

“Um…” He fumbled that one. “Because it’s—not legal?”

“Ms. Romanoff,” Karen intruded. “Dr. Stillwell has entered the Oscorp facility, his ID was scanned in sixty seconds ago.”

Stillwell worked with Dr. Connors. “Okay…we may need a distraction. I’m in 2407…an…th—they—scr—tem—s—t—by.”

“What? Karen—why did the transmission go garbled?”

“It appears to be a scrambling system. It wasn’t activated earlier when we penetrated the security system, but with all the videos on a loop, someone has turned on something to block any signals going in or out.”

“Only in that lab?” The sweat on the back of his neck seemed to trickle faster and the distant thunder rumbled again. _Don’t rain. Don’t. Rain._

Thunder cracked closer.

And it started to rain.

He didn’t bang his head back against the building, but he thought about it. “Karen?”

“Sorry Peter, the loop and the scrambler are independent systems, and not accessible via the main database…”

“So she’s on her own?” He turned and tried to ignore the beat of the rain cutting against his suit.

“I’m sorry Peter. I’ll keep working on it.”

Great.

Just great.

 

 

**Wanda**

 

“Look alive people, the truck comes out of the tunnel in six…five…four…” Stark counted it down and Wanda took position near the road. Her job was to get the truck up into the air and keep it there. They couldn’t afford for it to crash or in anyway disturb the contents.

Rhodey was in position a few feet behind her, his armor shielding him and if anything went wrong, he was picking her up and carrying her skyward. Vision was over the tunnel exit itself; he would blockade their escape should they for some reason turn to go back inside. Overhead Iron Man and Falcon were making sweeps and Cap stood to her right.

“Three…”

She could do this.

“Two…”

“You can do this, Wanda,” Cap told her, more confidence in his voice than she felt. This was her first time back in the field since the disaster in Lagos. The stuff in this tanker wasn’t a bomb, well not fully, but it was very dangerous. The fact Cap was in full body armor worried her more than her part in the task. Body armor meant they were expecting it go bad.

“…one…” As Stark exhaled the last syllable, the tanker truck emerged from the shadows of the tunnel and Wanda focused her will on the vehicle. Stretching her hands, she curled her fingers and imagined wrapping the lightest of hooks around the truck, front and back—keep it balanced and then it was going upward. The wheels kept spinning, but she pushed that thought away.

Keeping the vehicle elevated about fifteen feet above the road, she worked to stabilize the body of the tanker. No rocking or shifting even as the cab dangled slightly and the engine whined.

“Nicely done, Wanda. Hold it there.” Cap said. “Tony you’re up.”

Iron Man zoomed into view and knocked on the glass of the truck. The driver gave a startled yelp. “Turn it off,” he ordered, his hand miming turning the key on the engine. The whine of the engine cut off abruptly, and spinning wheels slowed. The truck was heavy, but she could keep it there. Sweat gathered at the back of her neck, but she kept her attention on the truck.

“Disconnecting the cab, gentlemen, you want to stay in your seats and keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle.” He pulled the cables and began working the hitch free. A bullet whizzed through the air, then another. Suddenly Cap was in front of her and bullets plinked off his shield.

The truck dropped a few feet before she could stabilize it and the gunfire stopped as abruptly as it began. The cab of the truck was disconnected and Iron Man carried it over to the side of the road and dropped it. “Falcon, you’re up.”

“Coming down.” He landed and had his guns on the driver who had his hands up and from her periphery; the passenger in the cab was slumped over. Was that blood?

The truck slipped a little.

“Easy Wanda,” Cap said. “Just like we practiced, keep it stable and we’re going to set it down in a minute.”

“That man…is bleeding?”

“He hit his head, he'll be fine, shouldn't have pulled out the gun.”

“Did I?”

“No,” Stark answered, hovering into view near the truck and Vision appeared opposite him. “That was me. He was shooting at you kid, but you’re fine and he has a headache. We’re all good.”

Oddly the blunt tone helped almost as much as Cap’s soothing one.

“Okay. Are we ready to put the tanker down?” Because the longer she held it there, the more slippery her hands felt. Which seemed silly, she wasn’t using her actual muscle strength to keep it aloft, but it did take her energy…

“One sec…we’ve got incoming in the tunnel.” Cap touched a hand to his helmet, though his face was visible because the visor was up. “Vision, a distraction if you would. Wanda, we want to move this tanker well off the road to the clearing. You think you can do that or you need us to try and take over?”

Maybe. “I can keep it stable, but you should probably do the guidance.”

“Tony, guide the tanker—Rhodey, can you fly Wanda so she can keep her attention on what she is doing? I’ll follow on foot, after we make sure the driver is secure.”

“On it.” Stark’s repulsors gave a whine and he started pushing the tanker itself. Wanda frowned because she had to lighten her resistance to his momentum while keeping the tanker up and lifting it high enough to clear the trees.

“Right behind you,” Rhodey warned her. “Picking you up in three, two…” and on the one, he fit his hands under her arms and then braced her as he lifted. His suit was steady as he rose, and she was able to keep all of her attention on the tanker. They were making good time.

Gun fire sounded behind her and the tanker dipped a little.

“We’re fine,” Cap said into comms. “The driver is really objecting to us taking the cargo, but he and his passenger are now secure. Vision—status in the tunnel?”

“There were three vehicles following, I have shut all of their engines down, and jammed their doors. They will be able to exit the vehicles shortly.”

“That’s fine, we should be clear by then and the fewer people we have to restrain the better. Go ahead and join us.”

Once upon a time when they’d been training, the others had wanted to reduce the comms traffic she heard—worried it would distract her. But fear for their status had played havoc with her concentration, so Natasha worked out a training regimen that included overloading her with a constant stream of data. If she could hear her teammates then she knew they were okay and could keep her attention on her tasks.

“Son of a …” Stark’s exclamation wasn’t a comfort though. “Watch it Rhodes…”

More gunfire.

“Stark?” Cap’s question hung over the open comms.

“Apparently we missed one,” Stark swore again. Bullets ricocheting off armor echoed over the comms, and then there was a whistle of a rocket bursting.

“Wanda turn the tanker, 90 degrees, now.” At Cap’s order she swung it, and a mini missile bypassed it, then circled back but Vision intercepted it and detonated it before it reached the tanker again. The shockwave shuddered the whole thing in her mental grip. The strain of dividing her attention sent a pulse of pain to throb behind her eye. She had to put it down.

“Wanda, we’re going to keep going,” Rhodey was saying.“They’ve got this. Cap and Falcon have the guys shooting at Tony. Vision is covering us. Just a few more feet. Can you do it?”

“Yes…” She pushed the word out and sent the tanker forward a few more feet.

“It’s okay, let Tony drive, you just keep it up there…Tones—Any. Day. Now.” Rhodey snapping the command to Stark instead of to her helped a little, at least it sent a laugh bubbling up. They were doing this. All of them working together.

Crazy time to figure out that they were reclaiming something they’d lost.

“A few more feet, Wanda…” Stark said. “Almost there…” Then another, “Almost there…”

A clunk sounded. Like a hard ball hitting a metal surface and Tony vanished from her line of sight. Then Rhodey let out a grunt and they tumbled sideways. The ground rushed up to them and she put one hand out in front of her to slow them down, and kept the other on the tanker and the world ribboned out, drawing tight like a band pulled too tight.

They were in the clearing not far from the quinjet. Tony was on his side pushing up and Rhodey was a couple of feet to her left, on his hands and knees. She hovered just above the earth and the tanker was above them.

“Guys?” Cap’s concerned voice raced over the comms.

“Captain,” Vision warned. “We have more incoming. Moving to intercept.”

“We’re almost there…” Cap said, but the tanker above them shuddered as something struck it.

“Oh…” Stark began.

“….shit…” Rhodey finished.

The tanker itself split apart, releasing gallons of black sludge and Wanda snapped her hands up as she hit the ground on her knees, contain it. She had to contain it.

The liquid surged around the ball she formed like a wave pool at one of the water parks, only instead of chlorinated water turning foamy it was tumbling black liquid.

She forgot the clearing.

She forgot the team.

She forgot about the incoming.

She had to keep that stuff up and off of Stark who was a dozen feet in front of her.

Cap skidded to a halt next to her and then there was more plinking sounds, but she shut them out. She had to keep that stuff up and away from the team. Up. She pushed, and drew the field tighter even as it surged and slashed at the field like it wanted out.

“Wanda…” Stark called her name. “If I move you, can you move it?”

Could she? Maybe.

Did she want to? Hell no.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Her whole body was bending under the physical weight of the violent churning. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

“Tony—that’s dangerous…”

“No choice Cap, if she loses that, we’re going to be releasing that stuff everywhere, we can’t afford to blow off half a mountain side.”

Bile burned against the back of her throat. She wouldn’t let it go. She wouldn’t kill more innocent people. Not again.

She had to do this.

_“Act,” Natasha said. “Don’t react. You can do this.”_

“I can do this,” she shouted. “Where are we going?”

“About fifty miles east,” Stark said and he was landing next to her. “Faster would be better than slower, but all you have to do is focus on that and trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you…”

_Act. Don’t react._

“Can you trust me, Maximoff?”

“I want to,” she admitted as a tear escaped the corner of her eye.

“You can do this,” Vision told her over the comms. “Mr. Stark will protect you. You have the strength Wanda.”

_Act._

_Don’t react._

She swallowed. “Let’s do it…” She could do this. She could _act_. “I trust you.”

“I got you kid,” Tony said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and then he scooped her up by her legs, he was holding her and the armor cradling her steadied her grip on the bubble she’d created around the sludge. “I’ve got you.”

Trusting him, she locked her attention to the bubble and firmed it tethering it tighter to her so it would follow. Her fingers cramped but she held them where they were.

“Here we go…”

“To Infinity,” Wanda cracked with a hint of a smile, trying not to cry because it hurt. It really hurt.

“…and beyond…” Tony laughed, and then he shot upwards. The wind slapped her face and pushed the tears out but the wicked ball followed them as the band snapped taut and pulled it along. It was like someone was yanking out her arm sockets, but she wasn’t going to release it.

“Faster,” she told him. “Must. Go. Faster.”

Because as badly as it hurt, she didn’t know how long she could last and the sooner they got wherever he was going…

The roar of his jets kicking in filled her ears as did the howl of the wind and her hair snapped out behind her, but the demon ball kept coming.

An eternity later, Tony slowed. “We’re almost there. “ He pivoted them, giving them a front row to the ball of red surrounding the black sludge winging toward them. Then he turned her downward. “See the big tower there?” She barely spared a glance at what looked like an oversized concrete tower, open at the top.

“Yes.”

“We’re dropping all of that, in there…”

“Won’t it get out?”

“No,” Tony told her. “Old coal mining shaft, completely shut down. No access for miles, and nothing living. They sealed these tunnels decades ago, that’s an air vent they built up when it was still running, and we’re dropping liquid nitrogen in after it…Vision and Rhodey are on the way, just get ready and then you can put that down.”

She only understood about half of what he said. Sweat had soaked through her clothes and she was dizzy.

“Can you take us right to it?” She asked, weariness swamping her. “I don’t know if I can put it in there from here.” She’d tried targeting in Lagos, before. She didn’t want to mess it up again.

“You got it.” Then they were flying, Tony angled them right over the open vent at the top and waited until the ball neared them. Then he retreated by a few feet at a time. “Hang on…couple more feet…there…now let it go.”

She released the field and dropped it. The black liquid seemed to hang suspended for several long, painful seconds and then it dropped into the open maw of the tower, every drop…nothing escaping.

She barely had time to register that when Vision appeared and he cracked two small tanks and flung them into the hole after the sludge. Rhodey was a few seconds behind him, and he repeated the maneuver.

There was a quiet boom, then a crinkling noise that grew louder like some crumpling up aluminum foil then silence. Vision descended into the hole and Tony shifted their flight back a few inches, and all Wanda could do was sit there like a limp noodle.

“Confirmed,” Vision announced. “The substance has frozen, it does not appear that anything has escaped the nitrogen…and I am detecting no signs of life or activity. All cellular functions have been neutralized.”

“Awesome,” Rhodey exhaled. “Who gets to clean that up?”

“That’ll be us…” Tony admitted. “We need to scrape it up and make sure it doesn’t become active again. Wanda? Hey…kid you still with us?”

“We’re almost there,” Cap said. He probably had to get the quinjet. That made sense.

She tried to give him a thumb’s up, but right now, all she wanted to do was sleep.

Stark wasn’t so bad.

Then she was out.

 

 

**Clint**

 

 

The snow had stopped sometime around lunch, but Barnes hadn’t returned to the cabin. After he’d carried Clint up—and that wasn’t embarrassing at all—he’d built a fire, and then inspected the whole place. The generator actually worked, though it was loud as hell and that gave them a modicum of light while it was still dark outside. The fire kept the front room warm, but instead of staying inside, Barnes had gone out hunting.

Bodies, Clint would guess. The bodies of those he’d taken out when they came for them. But there was no telling if any remains would even be visible after forty some odd years much less with all the snow on top.

But the man wasn’t really listening to him anymore. Having gotten a good look at the bedroom, and the dresser drawer, Clint couldn’t say he blamed him. So he stuck to the cabin, and kept watch. Not like he could hike out there at the moment anyway. If nothing else, he was a reason for Barnes to come back.

Sometimes, that was all Nat needed. A single reason. He could do that.

It was nearing twenty-four hours since they’d left New York, and he hadn’t checked in. They wouldn’t be able to push that much longer. Sooner or later someone would notice he and Barnes were gone, him more likely than Barnes if Nat and Steve were still on that job. But he wouldn’t put money on it.

He glanced around the room, it was spartan and what little personality some of the items—the tea cup for example—offered, it didn’t give any insight into the people who’d made this place their home. How it lasted all these years, untouched? Maybe the isolation played in their favor. The roof was in decent shape, and the walls were still sealed. The fire offset the faint draft he’d detected but hadn’t located.

Moving from one window to the next, Clint leaned more on the cane than he wanted to admit. Nat had lived here. A long time before Clint had ever known her, Nat had made this place her home. Maybe the first home she’d ever really had.

Oddly—the lack of personal items, the spartan nature, it was all so Nat. He’d given her a plant once for a housewarming gift when she got her first apartment outside of SHIELD. She’d given him the most bemused look, but accepted it.

Three months later, when he got his first look in her new apartment, he’d found a pair of bean bags, a portable table, a single bed in the corner, one plate, one cup, one glass, one fork, one knife, and one spoon—all mismatched, and his plant.

It was the single personal item in the place.

She could pack up and move in under an hour from nearly every place he’d ever seen her occupy as _hers_. Their safe houses had more personality.

Every place except her floor at the Tower, he amended. She’d added items there—mostly gifts from the others though. Not things she’d purchased.

His soul ached as he looked around this place. Barnes’ gaze had been haunted when he’d brought Clint in, and then he’d been all business. As it grew more light outside though, he’d caught Barnes staring at different places in the cabin—a corner in the kitchen, the stone of the hearth, and even the single shelf on the wall in the partition off bedroom.

What he saw Clint couldn’t begin to guess…

Still, if this place had been Nat’s—she marked her homes, in subtle ways. Little things that left messages. Sometimes, they just said “stop sneaking around my shit” that had been a favorite. It had been tucked into a nook of her closet in her place in D.C. A message carved out of dots and dashes.

After another look outside, he began to work his way around the cabin. He started in the kitchen. He opened each of the three cabinet doors, skimming the inside of the door, and then the lower shelves. She wouldn’t hide it up so high it would be out of the line of sight. Those areas were usually reserved for weapons anyway. There were three drawers in the kitchen, they were all empty save for a scattering of silverware—two or three of things instead of one each.

Adjustments for sharing her space with Barnes and their kid.

Fuck, Nat had a kid. That was not going to settle into him at any point. Nat loved kids, or at least, she loved his. The most relaxed he’d ever seen her was when he found her sound asleep on his sofa once, Lila asleep against her chest. She had one hand on Lila’s back, and the other between the cushions. He had no doubt her hand was on a weapon there, ready to defend the baby, but instead of tense lines in her face, she’d been totally at ease.

And at some point in her life, she’d had that for herself with her own daughter.

Fuckers.

Finding nothing in the kitchen, he made his way to the living room, examining the windowsills and the walls themselves. He had a small flashlight to peer into shadowed areas and depressions. He’d made a full sweep of the living room before venturing into their shared bedroom. Despite only be separated by half wall creating a u shape for the cabin, he still felt like he was intruding.

It wasn’t until he reached the drawer itself that he saw the edge of etching. It was on the corner, and he had to sit down on the bed gingerly, then turn the drawer over.

моя луна и звезды.

The Cyrillic letters had been carefully carved along the edge of the wood in a familiar script. She could make letters flow even when her only tool was an old screwdriver.

He recognized one of the words—it was my, but the other two weren’t familiar and while he knew a passable amount of Russian, reading it was not the same as listening to it.

A thunk of weight on the porch alerted him to Barnes’ return and he set the drawer down and had just made it to his feet when the front door opened, admitting a rush of cold wind, and then the man himself stood framed in the open entranceway to the bedroom.

“Find something?” Barnes asked as he unwrapped a scarf from his reddened face.

Clint nodded to the drawer. “Something in Cyrillic on the bottom.”

Barnes didn’t even glance at it. “My moon and stars.”

Oh.

Then Barnes asked, “Why were you looking?”

“She always leaves something in her places—the ones she actually lives in that aren’t safe houses. Little messages…used to think they were jokes, but then I got the feeling they were her way of claiming something even if she didn’t plan to stay forever.”

The other man nodded as he stripped off his gloves, and then he said, “Natalia didn’t like fairy tales or stories…she said they were too fake. The real world was so much colder and no magic being was going to come along and wave a wand and save us from it.”

That sounded like Nat.

“But after Mary Elizabeth was born…” His voice thickened. “She told me she wanted to believe in them…she was her moon and stars, _luna i zvezda moya.”_

“She calls you that sometimes…I heard her—zvezda moya.”

“My star,” he made a face, then tapped his upper left arm where a red star used to be. “I was their soldier, but her star.”

And their child would have been all of the above.

“Man, I’m sorry—”

“Me, too. Come…I brought up food from the car, and I found the field where they took me.” He said them both like he was discussing running out to the grocery store, but Clint traced his fingers over the letters before he stood.

In the front room, Barnes had dragged the sofa over closer to the fire, then he carried the table over before he set the protein bars and water bottles down on it. Haute cuisine.

Not that Clint hadn’t had worse.

Once he was seated, the man tore off the packaging on one of the bars then laid out a map. He marked the spot where the cabin was, and there little X’s in the surrounding fields, and then more down the way, finally he circled a spot.

“That’s—fuck man that’s five miles from here.” Clint squinted at the map.

“Yeah,” Barnes admitted, with a hint of a smile. “I made them work for it. I intercepted them here…” He tapped a space on the map closer to the road. “Then angled off the road, and south. They chased me…they never came up here.”

He pulled them hell and gone away. Clint stripped open his protein bar, and Barnes dug something out of his pocket, then dropped a handful of buttons onto the table. They were old brass, and a little green around the edges as though time had worn them down. But the symbol in the center, faded as they were, was unmistakable.

Hydra.

If they’d had any questions about the Red Room’s relationship with Hydra, they didn’t anymore. But it wasn’t those buttons that Barnes motioned him to, but a coin he pulled out from under them. It was roughly the size of a quarter, and Clint had seem them before.

His stomach turned over.

It was a challenge coin and the symbol in the center was SHIELD. Only top tier agents got those coins—Clint had one, it was in his dresser at the farm. They were promises that could be given to contacts, a promise that SHIELD would have their back.

Not all of them were lies, but enough…enough to spoil the whole damn barrel.

“I found their bones…or some of them. They’re probably not all there, but it looks like the mountain took them. The snow is pretty heavy, but not deep. Bones, a few items—like the metal survived. The clothing is gone.” He took a bite out of the bar. “If my memory is right…there would have been thirty one bodies, maybe thirty two. But I think the last one bled out in the vehicle on their way to taking me to transport.”

No pride or bragging marked the words, just basic facts.

“So proof,” he said slowly, and Barnes nodded, his expression grave and his eyes distant.

“We were here. But where she went after…I found no sign.”

No messages.

No marks.

Either time erased them or Nat hadn’t left any.

“You have to tell her,” Clint told him, then he took a bite.

A single nod, but the man didn’t look away from the fire.

“But we can sit here a while if you need it,” he told him, before cracking open one of the water bottles. “We have time.”

Another nod, and Clint turned to look at the fire and pretended not to see the tear rolling down Barnes’ cheek. A tear he wanted to share in. The man needed time, and more than likely, he needed a friend.

All Clint could do at the moment was be there. 


	44. Wreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything at Oscorp goes as planned....until it doesn't...

**Chapter Forty-Four**

**Wreck**

**Natasha**

 

 

The worst part of working in a hazmat suit was the feeling of isolation, she’d never been claustrophobic—thankfully—but she didn’t like being smothered either.

“Yes I did. Work smarter, not harder…” she told Peter as she made her way through the airlocks to the sealed corridor between labs. The schematics indicated the main hallway, but not this one. It made sense though, why expose the clean room hazmat suits to the open air when you could access the labs via a controlled environment? Dr. Connors reacting with so much paranoia had been an unexpected complication; fortunately she planned for such things. The titanium-lined case was weight rated to with stand several tons, too and offered her a single shot to keep a door open if necessary. The flash bang and gas had already deployed, so her two for one, was now just a one.

Peter snickered. “I think that applies to actual work, not stealing and spying.”

Children. “What makes you think spying or stealing isn’t _actual_ work?”

“Um…” He fumbled that one. “Because it’s—not legal?”

She didn’t laugh, but the innocence in that statement amused her.

“Ms. Romanoff,” Karen intruded. “Dr. Stillwell has entered the Oscorp facility, his ID was scanned in sixty seconds ago.”

Stillwell worked with Dr. Connors. Peter had mentioned him when he described the man’s work with the recombinator and the serum… She and he needed to have a very long discussion with, however, now was not that time. “Okay…we may need a distraction. I’m in 2407…” The door hissed up after she slid the keycard and typed in the security code. Once inside, the signal on her phone went from 90% down to 10 and dropping like a rock. Dammit—but that would make sense. The cameras looped and the labs barricaded against surveillance. “And they have a scrambler,” she told Peter hoping the message got through. “Stand by.” Then she started a mental countdown

The interior of the lab lit up on her entrance, there were beakers set up along one table, some suspended over Bunsen burners and others just waiting in their stands. A blue suspension liquid in the containers sent the creep of the past to crawl right through her blood and she suppressed a shudder of revulsion.

They didn’t have time for any involuntary physiological responses. Several containment units lined the wall, all closed door with no observation. That meant she’d have to open them one at a time.

Nuisance.

Moving to the desktop in the room, she tapped the spacebar to bring it up then set the briefcase on the counter next to it. Slipping a thumb drive from the corner pocket, she inserted it into the USB drive, and then let her program do the walking while she moved to the refrigeration unit doors. If the surveillance on this level was questionable, then Karen’s access to their systems up here could be, too.

Her mental count had her at one minute and thirty seconds since Karen announced Stillwell’s arrival. The first one opened and she scanned the contents. She recognized about a third of the chemical names, but most were reagents, and compounds used to catalyze reactions. So general supplies for this kind of a lab. Closing the door, she moved to the second. More reagents, organized neatly. The blue liquid was on a bottom shelf and she dipped to read the name of it.

 _Mycobacterium smegmatis_ Type II.

It meant nothing to her, but she lifted out one of the containers carefully and then made use of their tools. After withdrawing a sample and stoppering the test tube neatly, she slotted it into a sealed compartment in the case. Then she returned the beaker to its place on the shelf and angled it exactly as it had been.

At four minutes, she was pushing it and still had eight more fridges to open. Three and four were nothing but microbiotic samples, molds, fungi, some resting in spot plates, and others in sealed petri dishes. She moved on when none appeared to be the black sludge.

Fridges five and six gave her a hell of a pause.

Blood.

Lots of it.

Some bagged like donations from a blood bank, others in resting cages of test tubes. Numbered, and tagged. She grabbed her phone and started photographing them, trying to document every test number. That slithering feeling of ice in her veins began its ascent. Even with the clean room suit to insulate her, she could practically taste the sanitized lab air tainting the coppery flavor of her blood. She ran her tongue over the inside of her lip, a phantom memory of pain when she’d bitten through it to keep from screaming.

Shutting that door, she moved to the next.

Tissue samples.

Shelf after shelf of tissue samples.

Different animals.

Different…reptiles.

They were catalogued neatly, and impersonally. Hell, some even seemed to be from people. So much so that when her name skipped past at the edge of her vision, she had to double back.

Her name.

Romanova.

The date was pre-SHIELD.

But that was _her_ tissue. She removed the dish, and the one below it. Then slotted them into different pockets of the case. More and more, she was glad she’d brought it even as she swallowed bile. The dishes next to hers: Leonid Nobokov on one, and the other Alexei Shostakov. As loathe as she was to touch them, she took them anyway. Skin crawling off her body, she shut the fridges and eyed nine and ten.

She was closing in on seven and a half minutes. They did not have the time to spend on this, she was here to find any CQ material they were housing. But she couldn’t shake the Peter’s story about the recombinator, the spider, and the fact they’d been working on some serum variant.

All the evidence she needed that Oscorp had been one of the companies looped into Leonid and Alexei’s mad plan was now stored in the case. But that wasn’t _why_ she was here.

Head. Not heart.

 _Get your head back in the game_. The mental reprimand washed over her like icy water and she pulled nine open. One flask sat in the middle of the refrigeration unit. The black liquid in the flask bubbled despite the near freezing temperature setting and she backed up immediately.

The bubbling slowed.

Then stopped.

Bingo.

But was that CQ-A? The D wasn’t active, right? This was A?

It wasn’t whatever the square was they’d retrieved from Hagen. One step closer.

A bubble.

Two.

More bubbles.

Three.

Bubbling away almost like it was striking upward for the top of the flask.

Evidence.

Evidence that it was here, but did she leave it? That would give them time to remove it. Or worse for something to happen to it.

It was a flask.

Not a containment unit.

Backing off, she scanned the lab and then grabbed a pair of heavy looking gloves. Dragging them over the clean room suit, she then grabbed some tongs. Carefully keeping her distance, she extended one gloved hand to remove the flask. It bubbled once or twice, but wasn’t at freak out mode.

So far so good.

Lifting it out of the fridge, she carefully set it on the counter. Thankfully, they had tissue transport coolers in the lab and she grabbed one, then maneuvered the flask into the cooler, activated the coolant on the side, then sealed it. There was a hiss, then a light flashed blue.

Suppressing a shudder, she closed nine and then opened ten. Every single shelf held samples.

All squares.

Squares.

Black squares.

Most were not in containers of any kind, they were just on the shelves, free standing and they vibrated and shimmered at her appearance, and she slammed the door shut.

The refrigeration unit trembled and she backed up a pace. Then another. Okay, definite confirmation and there was no way to remove that many samples. Just—not…

Snagging the thumb drive from the computer, she hid it away in the briefcase, then closed it and picked it and the cooling unit up. She had the lined gloves on, but that was only going to last to the clean room. They had so much of the other CQ substance, did she dare leave with the liquidized version?

Foolish risk.

ROI substantially lower than the risk was worth.

Leaving the stable material was far more dangerous, but _she_ had no way to remove it.

For a split second, the thought to summon Peter inside stealthed out of some dark and shadowed corner until she laid her gaze on it. Then it froze and retreated immediately. She wasn’t introducing Peter to this stuff or dragging him in here whether the material reacted to him or not.

Somewhere in this room, he’d been exposed to the spider. Whatever he’d found then, didn’t appear present now but he said he’d knocked it over.

She glanced at the counters, no terrariums or other cases.

No all the samples present were in the fridges.

Still gripping the cooler in her hand, she wrestled with the choice. If it were only herself she risked, she’d dare it—somewhere on the floor an alarm rang. It was low, a beeping like a timer finishing.

Dammit.

Cooler in hand, she left 2407 and returned to the environment-controlled corridor. Her comms snapped to life…

“Natasha, Dr. Stillwell was on his way to 24, Karen distracted him by having him paged downstairs for a delivery. But you need to go...”

“I’m on way out. Go ahead and get clear. I’ll meet you at the Tower.”

“I’ll go when you’re outside.”

“Peter…”

“Sorry…” he made a clicking noise. “Yo—bre—up—d…” Then the comms went quiet.

“Karen,” she said as she made her way to the clean room. “Tell Peter that acting is not his forte.”

“I’m afraid he seems to be experiencing a communications failure. I’m working to reroute.” Nice. Now the AI covered for him.

Shaking her head, she slipped into the clean room and studied Connors. He was still out. She stripped out of the suit, and then checked his pulse. Steady, but his skin was cool and his respiration not labored, but very slow. He would probably have a hangover, but he’d survive.

She stripped off his restraints, then repositioned him so if he woke, he’d be leaning against the side of a locker, like he’d simply sat down and fallen asleep. Finished, she clipped his security badge back into place then smoothed a hand over her outfit before retrieving the brief case and eyeing the cooler.

“Cooperate,” she told it. “You freak out, and neither of us are getting out of here.”

And now she was talking to the sludge.

To think, she’d woken that morning in Niagara Falls next to Steve and she could have still been there instead of here.

Shaking her head, she grasped the cooler and made her way to the elevator. The code opened the door and she stepped inside.

“Ms. Romanoff, we have you on camera again.” She nodded to let Karen know she’d heard her. The elevator descended toward the lobby, and piece-by-piece she reassembled Naomi Roehmer until the tension in her shoulders and spine relaxed. Naomi’s meeting with Dr. Connors had been a success and the fact she’d run late hadn’t created more issues for her. Now she was free to go and spend some time seeing the sites in the New York…

The mental headspace jolted when the elevator halted abruptly around three.

“Ms. Romanoff…security has been alerted to you. The elevator will not descend back to the lobby…” Concern marked Karen’s tone.

Was Connors awake? Or had she tripped some other piece of their security? It didn’t matter which, they didn’t have time for this. Setting the briefcase down and cooler down, she stepped on the briefcase, then leaped, hitting the side of the elevator and jumping to hit the tile at the top to release the trapdoor. Dropping back, she did another leap to catch the lip, then pushed the door open.

Security response times in Oscorp were under three minutes. Once the trap door was open, she got the cooler up there, then the brief case, then did a hop, leap, off the walls to catch the lip, and swung herself up into the shaft. Closing the elevator hatch, she pulled open the right heel of her shoe and pulled out the repelling cord. It worked better with a gun to fire the claw, and stabilize her grip, but right now she tied it through the briefcase handle, then strapped the case to her back. The titanium would give her a bit of a bullet proof covering, and free up her hands so she only had to carry the cooler.

Cooler in hand, she began her ascent along the ladder. The schematics for the building included a sky bridge between the eighth floors with the tower across the street. Though considerably smaller, there were shops and restaurants there. The enclosed bridge was ideal for bad weather access. Climbing steadily, she kept her respiration under control. Slow breaths reduced the physiological stress responses, and limited the sweating. At the seventh floor, she moved carefully, bracing herself to reach the doors. Most were locked against opening when the car wasn’t present, but there was a switch on the inside for technicians to pull and it released the seal.

“You are clear,” Karen murmured in her ear. And she didn’t comment on the fact that if Karen was still close enough to transmit, Peter probably hadn’t listened to her. The doors parted and she stepped out onto the level. Dusting herself off, she shifted the strap over and resumed carrying the case in one hand with the cooler in the other. She altered her route and diverted toward the stairwell. The elevator doors closed softly even as she pushed into the stairwell.

Fire codes restricted them locking the stairwells to an access code to enter them. It wouldn’t stop them from making her type in a code to get out save for one the ground floor or the roof, but she ascended to the eighth floor and listened at the door for a moment.

“Hold a moment, Ms. Romanoff. There are two employees waiting on the elevator.” She shook her head, and scanned for the camera. At least if Karen was watching her, there was a chance she was rerouting the cameras. It felt a little like cheating, but she kept that to herself. “Clear.”

The door light went green. Karen had unlocked it. Letting herself out onto the eighth floor, she scanned the layout. Standard office space, wide hallways, with doors feeding off. A public restroom for women to her right and for men to her left. She went into the bathroom to the left, and checked under the doors. Finding no one, she pulled her hair down, stripped off her glasses—Peter didn’t need a show if he was still watching. Stripping off the now slightly stained white shirt, she pulled a ceramic blade out the sheath at the base of her spine, and sliced through the shirt until she’d take it down to strips. Washing the cosmetics off her face, she peeled off the putty. The white tank top wasn’t quite office friendly, but it would do for now. She deposited the remnants into different toilets and flushed away the evidence of her presence, then she pulled gum out of her pocket, peeled off the foil, and stuffed it in her mouth to chew before retrieving the case and the cooler, then she left the bathroom.

The sky bridge was on the exterior of the building, about fifty feet from her current position. She checked the offices as she passed them, slowing at an open door. The office itself was unoccupied, but there was a steaming cup on the desk. Checking behind the door, she pulled a coat off of it, and then tugged it on. It was a little large, but it would do. Zipping it up, she grabbed her cases and set out. She made it around the corner and to the sky bridge, chewing the gum, and blowing a bubble, trusting the fall of her hair to hide half her face.

The sliding doors parted and she was walking up three steps to cross the bridge. There were employees heading her way. A couple of youngish looking businessmen who cast her the automatic polite smile you made when your gaze accidentally collided with another’s. She didn’t do the same, her expression bored and vacant.

Many years of practice had pacing forward like a drone and then she was in the neighboring building and she skipped the elevators entirely and began the descent in the stairwell.

At the fourth floor, she stripped out of the jacket, and tossed it over the arm holding the cooler. It disguised it well enough. By the third floor, she’d gotten the corded strap over her crosswise, so the briefcase tucked against the hip and the jacket added to its disguise. Kind of like a messenger bag if someone didn’t look too closely.

On the second floor, she pinched her lips until they stung. It would make them look swollen. Then she ran her free hand through her hair and gave it a tousled look before she pinched her cheeks. The evidence of Steve’s hickeys had almost faded entirely, but she recalled the one at the juncture of her throat and shoulder. He’d paid particular attention there, and it had been darker than the rest.

Pinching it a few times, she had her thumb planted against it to flush the area with blood and irritate the healing bruise. At the first floor, she tucked one arm of the glasses into the v between her breasts so they hung off the tank top. She’d left her dog tags back at the Tower, but the reminder made her aware of their absence.

Naomi thoroughly shaken off, she embraced an on the spot alias of Nikki and strutted out of the door to the stairwell with a little half stumble and a crazy grin. Chewing her gum, she winked at the first person who caught her eye and let her grin grow when the woman blushed and glanced away.

Yes, the generally just got fucked look was nearly as embarrassing to some people as a straight up PDA. Those that did look, tended to focus on her assets rather than her face, otherwise their gazes slipped off her out of some sense of shame. The first floor offered a couple of shops, including one of those organic groceries. Stepping inside, the grabbed a few items and bought three of the canvas bags to carry her stuff. Slipping the cooler inside of one before she ducked out the door, she turned the briefcase sideways and it almost fit in the second, she managed to drag the purloined jacket on, and then she was out into the rain. She made it half a block before Peter dashed out to walk next to her, in his civilian clothes once more.

Hair plastered to her face, she shook her head at him.

“How did you know to do all that?” He asked as they weaved past pedestrians hurrying past them. Umbrellas were everywhere, but neither she nor Peter had that luxury. He had his shoulders hunched though, and the jacket he wore was too thin for this weather.

“Experience,” she told him, then frowned as she nudged him up the block. “There’s a café on the next street. Go inside and warm up.”

“We’re just a couple of blocks to go,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.” He glanced at her bags and when he held out a hand to take one, she gave him the one with the fruit only.

“I told you to get out there…” She reminded him.

“I wasn’t leaving you.”

A little sigh escaped. She really didn’t want to reprimand him. The whole point of her earlier lesson was that some times you had to make choices. He'd made his, even if she didn't care for it. “Peter…”

“I know, I’m supposed to cooperate and follow orders, even when I don’t like them.” He held up a hand as if asking her to cut him some slack. At the corner, waiting for the light, she kept her head on a swivel and checked the route behind them. So far Oscorp security hadn’t tracked her path, and the best thing to do was to keep playing it casual. “But I couldn’t go back and wonder if you needed our help. And Karen was useful, right?”

“Yes, she was,” she conceded. When the light changed, she nudged him with a shoulder and they fell into step. The wind cut around the buildings slashing the rain sideways. “But that doesn’t change the fact that if I can’t trust you to listen to me, it’s going to make working together challenging.”

When he went silent, she let him chew on that one. Less than a block from the Tower, her comm crackled to life.

“Red? Where are you right now?”

“Out for a walk,” she said without missing a beat. “Where are you?”

“Mr. Parker?” Tony said instead of answering her. Peter made a face, then glanced at her and she raised her brows.

“We went for a walk together,” Peter managed, though the strain in his voice suggested awareness that they were doing something wrong.

“Leave Peter alone, Tony,” she said casually, nudging Peter to take the next turn. Even soaked through, she still needed to take an alternative route into the Tower. “You know how I get.”

“Yes,” Tony said, his tone as dry as the air was not. There was a gentle roar overhead and she didn’t have to look up to see the Iron Man armor passing by. “I do. Which is why I tracked you to Oscorp. Want to share with the class?”

She glared at the bracelet on her wrist. “We discussed you just turning it on…”

“And yet you’re still wearing it…” A double beep told her the comm went private. “You vanished from the Tower _with_ the kid while we’re mid-mission…”

“Everything went fine, right?” Tony wouldn’t be berating her otherwise. They were nearly to the garage when the doors rolled open and a car emerged, she angled away from it and didn’t look to where Sam was behind the wheel and pulling out. Peter shifted his direction when she did.

“Hang on,” Tony said as she continued past the Tower and went to circle the block. Was the whole team back?

Well that would explain why Tony was looking…

Peter fidgeted next to her and he shot a couple of glances over his shoulder.

“Problem?” she murmured, angling her head to check their six. She’d seen nothing directly, but what pedestrian traffic there was moved with their heads down or sheltered below umbrellas getting blown this way and that.

“Not sure…I just can’t shake this…I’ve had a bad feeling since you got on the elevator, and I thought it would go away, but it just seems worse.”

She flicked a look ahead of them. Traffic was heavy, but moving. Lots of dark cars, some vans, sedans, and a handful of SUVs—rain. Men in coats. Men in hats. Tourists on the corner, the bravest or maybe the most foolhardy…sticking it out despite the storm. The overhang offered some meager protection.

She noticed things. She’d always noticed them. It was a reflex brought on by training. Track familiar faces. What was out of place? License plates on vehicles? Damage to cars. Clothing that didn’t fit the typical populace. It was November in New York, late afternoon closing in on five p.m., and the push for people to head home from work would start pouring the crush of crowds out onto the streets as they hurried for taxis, the subway, their ride shares, and for those in the top percent, their own cars.

Because the average New Yorker didn’t bother with a car if they could help it.

The second pass of the SUV registered as they reached their first circuit of the block. Peter’s agitation seemed to bleed off him.

“Peter…take the bags and go straight to the front doors of the Tower and up to Tony’s lab. Do not open them. Give them to Tony. Do you understand?” She didn’t have time for an argument, and she kept her tone as impersonal and businesslike as if she were giving him instructions for doing his homework. “You’re going to do it and not argue. Don’t look at me.”

She adjusted her pace, slipping one bag down and then Peter’s hand brushed hers as he took both of them. The bracelet popped off her wrist, and she wrapped it on Peter’s then tapped it twice so it locked on.

“What…”

“Tony—Peter’s got my bracelet on, do not lose sight of him.” Then she was walking away.

“Nat—?” The question in Peter’s voice dragged at her, but she pushed the concern away. Yes, she’d just handed him the sludge and the samples, still he would be safer far away from her.

“Go,” she ordered him.

The SUV passed for the third time.

“Talk to me Angel,” Steve was on comms now.

She crossed the street, angling away from the Tower and Peter, bless him, actually listened to her. Hell’s Kitchen or Times Square was her only internal debate. Times Square would be busier, and Matty might actually kill her if she brought this mess to his doorstep.

“Just taking a walk,” she told Steve, darting through traffic rather than waiting for the traffic light. The honking horns and yelled insults were a familiar lullaby. “Let me know when Peter is inside.”

“We’ve got him, Red. He’s in the elevator on the way to the Penthouse. Turn around and come back this way.”

She didn’t answer, scanning the street she maneuvered in and around the crowd. Stumbling a half step, she bounced off one guy and slipped her hand in to his pocket and pulled out his wallet. A half block later, she flipped it open and pulled out the cash, then then his metro card before dumping the rest of it into the post box. They would get his wallet back to him.

A double beep, channel going secure. “Nat…I’m a block behind you…”

“Not a good plan, Steve,” she said. “Let me slip whoever these guys are, but I don’t want to pull them to the Tower.” The park was across the street, but she stayed on course for Times Square. She could probably lose them in Central Park, but that would invite a foot race.

The SUV passed her for the fourth time.

“Then me being a block behind you gives you eyes back here.” What was it with the guys around her? None of them listened anymore.

James took off.

Clint ditched his anklet and went with him.

Peter didn’t leave when she told him to.

Tony kept tracking her on the bracelet.

Now Steve was on the street…

“Which guys? Give me eyes on whoever it is,” Tony ordered.

She didn’t check behind her. If Steve really was closing, she didn’t want to encourage him to narrow the distance any farther. “Probably just me being paranoid.”

Peter had the sludge at the Tower.

“Tony, you need to secure the items I sent back with Peter…”

“He’s securing them in the cold storage in my lab, it will be fine.”

Yes, but would Peter stay put?

A flash of blue and red from the corner of her eye answered that question. Ignoring the rivulets of water running down her face, she dug the glasses she’d _borrowed_ from Tony out of her shirt and slid them on. The rain clung to the lenses, and they threatened to fog up, but she pressed the corner button and the display came up in the corner.

On the fifth pass of the SUV, she paused and smiled at the man who held his umbrella over her. He nodded to her politely but she got a look at the SUV and focused on the license plate.

“Got it,” Tony said. “Steve, you’re about hundred feet behind her, she’s next to the tall guy in the dark overcoat and in need of better hair plugs.”

The itch between her shoulder blades subsumed the urge to flip him off. Awareness skimmed over her. The light changed and the crowd around her surged forward, sharp movement from her right and she turned, caught the hand jabbing the needle toward her and turned the wrist, she caught the syringe in her free hand and jammed it upward, between his arm and body and depressed the plunger before shoving away. It stumbled the guy into the man next to him, who shoved him back. She was already melting through the crowd when he collapsed.

On the far side of the street, she snapped the needle off and dropped all of it down a storm drain. The world narrowed around her. You didn’t drug someone out in the open unless you planned to kill them right there or scoop them up.

Ten feet ahead of her, a guy turned away from the paper stand and headed toward her. She didn’t need to guess to recognize the way he held the paper that he covered a gun. Too many people.

Angling directly for him, she locked gazes and didn’t blink. The crowd around them meant she had one shot at this before innocents got hurt. Surprise flickered in the man’s eyes and at the last moment he raised his newspaper, but she was already there, _stumbling_ into him and twisted his arm until she heard something snap, he grimaced. Then another hand had him by the shoulder as if _steadying_ him. It shook the gun from his hand and she caught it and hid it and then the guy dropped stumbling almost drunkenly as Steve smacked him very smartly into the lamppost and let him lean there. Without missing a beat he fell into step beside her.

“So…” he said. “I had some time. Feel like getting a slice?”

Shaking her head, she stripped the gun under her jacket and unloaded it. “Two more coming from the park.”

“I see them. I was thinking we could grab something at Junior’s since we’re already heading that way.” The heavy coat he wore was the only thing disguising his tact gear, and he moved to angle more to cover her back as they headed right towards the pair coming for them.

“Not sure I’m in the mood for cheesecake,” she said, dropping the emptied magazine into a trashcan, and the the firing pin of the hand gun into the next. 

The guys in front of them broke apart.

“You know they serve more than cheesecake,” Steve told her before he jogged left to intercept one while she tackled the other. Even amidst the crowds, it was easy enough to grab the guy’s arm and slam the heel of her hand against his larynx. The speed cut off his air and choked any sound. The half-tussle-dance was the same most people did when they didn’t anticipate correctly which way the other was going to go.

Laughing, she _steadied_ him with a solid jab to the base of his skull and then left him leaning next to the closed storefront before proceeding onward. Steve fell into step with her a heartbeat later. “I know they serve more than cheesecake, but that’s all I ever get when we go there,” she said.

The cold was numbing her hand, and she almost didn’t mind when Steve caught and held it for a moment, passing a couple of stingers to her. A grin tugged at her mouth.

Very smooth.

“Well then maybe today is the day we decide on something new.”

She adjusted her glasses. The SUV had been curiously absent so either that four man team was it, or they were waiting ahead. “We’ve been doing a lot of new things lately…”

“Have you heard any complaints from me, yet?” He tugged an umbrella out from one of his coat’s pockets and snapped it open like it was the most natural thing in the world, then he held it over her head while he wrapped an arm around her.

“Not that I can recall…” She smirked a little, but let him draw her to the right so they could hook around the block. They were almost to Times Square. Leaving the busier street, they were either going to lure any other pursuers out. Ahead of them, a man appeared from an alley, and his gun wasn’t hidden at all. Before she could react though, he vanished, yanking upwards. There was the sound of a couple of hard hits, and then the gun reappeared falling toward the pavement. A second later, it zipped back upward.

“Good, cause you’re not going to. But if you don’t want Juniors or a slice, what are you in the mood for?”

“At the moment, a hot bath and some hot cocoa…or maybe mulled wine.” Or a double shot of vodka, that would warm her up.

“I can arrange those,” Steve offered.

“Ahem,” Tony cleared his throat. “You’re making the kid gag.”

Nat didn’t have to glance up to know Peter was following along the buildings to their right.

Steve chuckled without an ounce of self-consciousness or a blush. The open reaction tickled her.

“Corrupted,” Tony declared. “I’m telling you Red, you’ve corrupted him.”

“Don’t be jealous Tony—I could have done the same to you but you were long gone before I got there.”

“True enough,” Tony conceded. “I have the SUV, it’s abandoned. So you two may have gotten them all…”

Yeah that didn’t explain the itch between her shoulder blades. Something was still off about all of this.

“Talk to me,” Steve repeated his earlier order, and she shook her head.

“I don’t know…I’m starting to feel like it's a set up…”

“Yeah?” Steve slowed their pace at the next crossing cause the don’t walk was up and traffic was thick through the intersection. They were back to a block away from the Tower.

“Yeah…it’s just…” The pain pierced her shoulder, and a second bloom of heat creased against her hip as something punched her in the back. She hit the ground and rolled, Steve all but tackled and covered her as he got her down behind a car. Glass exploded. Blinking past the white hot river racing down her side, she pressed against the metal.

A strafe of fire hit the pavement right next to them and then the screams came. A woman a few yards ahead went down, and a man across the street. There were shouts. Steve pressed her hand to her shoulder. Concern and focus rippled across his face as he assessed the situation. “Stay here.” Then he was gone. She palmed the stingers in her free hand and gritted her teeth. Right through her left shoulder.

Again.

The burn on her hip said another bullet had creased her. Between the rain and the blood—an explosion rocked the street interrupting her thought. Then another. She leaned away from the car to get a look as a third one went up. The heat of it ballooned toward her, along with the force and she winced, tucking her head as it shoved her back to bounce against the car. She didn’t linger, pushing away, she made it three steps before it exploded and the force of it sent her flying toward the brick.

A second before she would have impacted, something caught her, cushioning her and melting away the heat washing around her. Then she was set down on her feet and she turned, locking gazes with Wanda.

“Nat…?”

“On your six,” Nat warned her, the flash of movement behind her including a flare and Wanda turned, she caught what looked like a grenade in a bubble of red energy and sent it skyward where it detonated harmlessly above.

There were people everywhere… more screams in the chaos.

“You’re hurt,” Wanda said unnecessarily as she closed the distance.

“Go,” Nat told her. “You can’t afford to be seen with…”

“I don’t care,” Wanda snapped, then got an arm around her and then they flying upward. She catapulted them up with energy and Nat grimaced as the shock of motion sent another vibration of pain through her shoulder as if sparking a chain of fire on the inside.

Light headed, she fought to deepen her breaths and then they were on the rooftop and the storm grew more fierce.

“I have Natasha,” Wanda said into her comms. “There are more cars exploding on the street…”

She turned. Steve was out there, somewhere.

Shoving her hand against her shoulder, she twisted to look back and then Spider-Man landed. “Go, they need you to contain the explosions…” he said to Wanda.

She blinked at him a minute, then glanced at Nat. Natasha almost laughed. Had these two actually even met yet? “It’s fine,” she told her. “Go help them. There’s innocents down there.”

Spider-Man jerked his head up. “Oh no…”

The whine of noise coming right at them couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

“Go!” Wanda yelled as she whipped her hands wide and red spread out to catch—a _missile?_ Peter scooped Natasha up with an arm around her and then he was running. Pain wrenched through her as he flung them both off the building and he whipped out the webbing. Trusting the kid to know what he was doing was one thing, leaving Wanda to face a missile alone was another.

Then a flash of silver as Falcon zoomed overhead and whipped back.

“Nat?”

Crap…

“Hey,” she said. “Fight’s that way.” She pointed back to the street and then she and Peter were soaring again.

They landed and there was a screech of vehicles and the flash of red and blue. Peter retreated and then set her down on a roof against the balustrade before glancing below. “That’s a lot of cops…”

Fuck.

She closed her eyes and tapped her head back against the brick. “Might not be for me.” There were explosions in the distance. The occasional rattle of gunfire.

“Go Peter…”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said, crouching next to her as if trying to shelter her from the rain.

“There are people in danger.” Steve. Wanda. Sam. Tony somewhere… “I can take care of me…go.”

“Stuff it Red,” Tony’s voice hummed into her ear and then there was armor landing in front of them. “Can you stand up?”

“Yeah,” she told him, but her hip protested as she forced her weight onto it. Peter steadied her. Compartmentalizing the pain, she pushed it all aside.

“Good…hold still.” The armor disassembled, and then snapped onto her, one piece at a time, and then the helmet landed and closed. She went from being drenched under a downpour to being drenched inside armor. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but she’d certainly dealt with worse.

The HUD came up and Tony’s face appeared in the corner. “Now, you just hang tight and let me and Friday do all the flying. Kid—get out of here, and somewhere secure. There’s a hell of a mess on the street, and you don’t need to be scooped up in it.”

“Mr. Stark…”

“You did good, Peter,” Nat told him. “Really good. But Tony’s right, we don’t want you associated with me, or any of this. But you can probably get back to the Tower the way you got out.”

Tony gave her a look via the monitor, but she ignored it. The kid was upset. Sending him home might have a longer term negative effect than letting him see everything worked out.

The kid hesitated.

“She’s going to be fine, Peter. We’ve got her.” Tony urged him and Peter nodded. With one last look at her, he crossed the roof in a bound and vanished over the edge. Only he was heading back into the fight…

“Tony…”

“Yeah, I saw it. Also, Steve is fine. He lost his comms taking out one of the rocket launchers. But Sam and Vision have eyes on him.” Relief flooded her and even though she hadn’t asked, she was glad to know. “He’s more worried about you.”

“Wanda and Sam saw me…”

“Yep, Black Widow’s out of the bag. We’ll deal with it, Red. Now, let’s make some noise.” Then she was airborne, soaring up and the cops below tracked her motion for a long second before they nodded and went back to cordoning off the street and evacuating civilians. There were ambulances on the street, and more emergency personnel. It was like a war zone. Detonated vehicles. Civilians stumbling around.

Worse, civilians down and not moving at all.

Fuck, had she done this? Had she brought this on taking the risk on Oscorp?

“Tony…Oscorp has more—” Something slammed into her. It was like being hit by a bowling ball. Surprise quickly followed by anger filled Tony’s expression before the HUD went dark and she spiraled downward. Seconds elongated as she tumbled, she couldn’t see anything to catch out her hands, nothing responded, she was so much dead weight…

…falling…

        ….falling….

                …something else crashed into her and then she was tumbling and her head slammed against the inside of the helmet and it went dark.

Darkness.

Blink.

“I got her…” Steve.

Darkness.

Blink.

“Back up so I can get the suit off.” Tony.

Darkness.

Blink.

“Put pressure on the wound there.” Sam.

Darkness.

Blink.

“Vitals are not encouraging. I will bring the doctor.” Vision.

Darkness.

Blink.

“Lay still. I know it hurts.” Steve.

It did?

Blink. The world fuzzed on the edges.

“You’ve lost some blood, Angel. You had a bullet lodged in your back, did you know that?”

Blink. No.

“We got it. You’re a little numb, that’s the pain meds.”

“Captain Rogers…” Cho.

Fuck.

Everyone knew.

“I already told you Doc, we’re staying right here.” Tony. “You do what you need to do.”

“Is she going to be all right, Mr. Stark?”

“She’s going to be fine.”

“Tony…”

“Not now, Platypus. Soon as Red is in the clear, you can take me out behind the wood shed and spank me.”

“C’mon, Peter…we can make some hot cocoa for everyone,” Wanda said.

Blink.

“Vitals have stabilized again. I’m concerned about the swelling around her spine, but we’re detecting electrical movement along the spinal cord. But we won’t know if anything is compromised until all the swelling is down.”

A hand smoothed over her hair. “She keeps coming in and out of consciousness…”

“Blood loss, and the concussion. The landing didn’t help either.” Pragmatic wasn’t always comforting, especially not in Dr. Cho’s no nonsense tones. “Then again, we’d be looking at more severe injuries if you hadn’t intercepted her Captain Rogers. How are your ribs?”

Steve got hurt?

“I’m fine. Just look after her.”

Blink.

“Hey, there she is,” Steve gazed down at her and the fuzzy lines all came together to form the concerned pair of blue eyes. “Was wondering if you were going to wake up.”

“Sorry,” she tried, but it came out a croak. “How—?”

“Where the fuck is she?” Something crashed outside, and there was a commotion.

“And Bucky is here,” Steve said with a small smile. Another slam, and then Steve glanced up from her. “Try not to take the door out, Buck. She’s right here.”

Then James was in her line of sight, his face a mask of concern and his pale blue eyes hard. Fingers brushed her cheek, and she tried to smile but it didn’t work. “What happened?” He glanced at Steve, but didn’t really look away from her.

“You saw the worst of it on the news,” he told him. Belatedly she realized her hand was in Steve’s. Everything ached from her head to her toenails.

“That doesn’t tell me how she is…how are you, lyubov moya?” Concern radiated off of him.

“Thirsty,” she managed and a moment later a straw rested at her lips and she took a drink. How long had she been here? Why the hell did it all still hurt so much? It was like she couldn’t get her thoughts to cooperate.

“Better?” Steve asked, and she tried to nod.

James took her other hand carefully in his. There was an IV coming out of it, and cold rushed over her and clarity sharpened.

An IV.

She jerked her hand and he closed his grip, so she couldn’t pull away. “Shh…you’re safe. No one is doing anything,” he assured her. “Right Steve?”

“Been here the whole time, promise. That’s just saline and pain meds. Maybe some antibiotics. Tony checks every bag, and no one touches it without one of us standing right here.”

“You’re safe,” James repeated. “No experiments. See—not even in a hospital room, look…”

Belatedly she focused past him as he motioned, and she was in her room—at the Tower. Steve’s floor. Her room.

“Thought you’d want to be here, and we’re limiting who can come and go. Helen’s pretty pissed at us. Tony and she have gone a couple of rounds, but she’s taken real good care of you.” Steve ran his thumb along the side of her hand, and she glanced between them again and forced herself to relax.

Not a lab.

Not an experiment.

No blue…

Blue liquid.

“Oscorp,” she squeezed out.

“We know, already working on it…Tony said they moved it all, but we’re tracking it. I promise. Right now, you concentrate on you.” She grimaced. No, she had to do something but every time she moved something else started hurting. Steve reached across her and then the world went fuzzy again. “Sorry Angel, you have to stay still for a bit longer…get your body to do what it’s supposed to.”

“I’m here, lyubov moya, we’re both here,” James said. But he didn’t say where he’d been. “You’re safe.”

Then the world faded more.

“Where the hell have you been?” Steve hissed out.

“Not now,” James answered.

“Soon.” It wasn’t a request. Aggravation strained the single word.

“Yes,” James agreed quietly, almost resigned. “I promise—there’s a lot to tell you both. But when she’s better…now what happened? Who hurt her?”

She didn’t catch Steve’s answer even when she strained. Sleep washed over her, drawing her further and further from the shore, despite the twin anchors of their hands on hers.


	45. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat wakes up after the attack...

**Chapter Forty-Five**

**Revelations**

**Natasha**

 

 

The next time she opened her eyes, it was dark save for a single light burning in the corner of the room. Squinting, she turned her head as awareness began to trickle back in. She was in her room. Steve’s floor. The Tower. Shot. Oscorp. The suit. Falling.

Movement, then the bed shifted next to her and she gaze blearily up at the half-shadowed, half in light features above her. “James?”

“Hi,” he said quietly, his voice barely a whisper. A hand stroked down her cheek, then smoothed the hair away from her face. All at once her mouth tasted sticky, and her skin felt clammy. Was that smell her? It wasn’t antiseptic or copper, but not—clean either.

“You’re back,” she managed, and her voice cracked, but he shifted to bring a straw to her lips. Then cold water rushed over her tongue and she gulped down several swallows. She hadn’t been this tired since New York—well maybe Ultron. That had been pretty bad at the end, too.

“I should have been here,” he told her, letting her drink her fill and only pulling it away when she let go of the straw.

“It’s okay,” she told him. Glad he was here at all. “What did you do with Steve?” She turned her head slowly; at least her skull wasn’t playing drums with every motion. That was improvement. Her vision wasn’t surging either. That had to be good.

“He's taking a shower, and then he's going to eat,” James told her. After he said, she caught the sound of running water. He was in her shower then. “He’s a mess doll, so don’t give him a hard time when you see him.”

She frowned, and glanced back at him. “Ribs…Cho asked about his ribs.”

“He cracked about all of them,” James told her bluntly. “He caught you—the news is running with Captain America saved Iron Man’s life and no one’s correcting them. But the suit you were in got hit with some kind of EMP. Took it straight down. Steve took the brunt of the fall, armor and all.”

Natasha winced. “He’s okay?”

“Looks like hell, but he’s going to be a hell of a lot better when he sees you’re awake again.” Another gentle stroke over her hair, his expression shifted. It was minute but she couldn’t miss the way the lines around his eyes tensed or the flicker of pain in his gaze.

“Are you okay?”

A soft laugh escaped him. “Doll…you’re lying in a bed, hooked up to an IV, and they’ve been keeping you doped and out so you wouldn’t move because they needed the swelling in your spine to go down so we could make sure you weren’t paralyzed, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”

“Well,” she said, running her tongue over her lips and trying not to think about how bad her mouth tasted at the moment. “You seem to be fully briefed on me.” She curled her toes, but she couldn’t tell if they moved. The question _I’m not paralyzed, right?_ didn’t leave her lips.

A hand rested against her leg.

A hand.

Then he squeezed it gently. “You can feel that right?”

She flicked her gaze up to meet his and nodded a little.

He moved his hand down her right leg, then the blanket over her feet shifted. Cool metal brushed the bottom of her foot. “And that?”

“Yes.” Relief swamped her and she curled her toes.

“And I can see you moving your toes.” Satisfaction colored his words. “So keeping you out was the thing to do. Out and still.”

“How long?” She managed still wrestling to get her reactions under control.

“Two days.”

Two days?

“Oscorp…”

He flattened a hand against her shoulder; effectively pinning her and she glared at him.

“Let me go, James.”

“Not yet,” he told her, his tone cool but firm. “You had a bullet lodged next to your spine Natalia. You will lay here and tolerate everything we can do for you, and you won’t fight us.”

“I will?” He did not just say that to her.

The door to the bathroom opened. Belatedly it dawned on her the water had stopped flowing, but she’d been too focused on her legs. Turning her head, she stared at Steve and caught her breath. _Bozhe moi_. Clad in sweatpants and shirtless, the ribbon of bruising across his chest dried all the moisture in her mouth. There were fresh pink lines, like he broke the skin, but they’d sealed shut.

Two days.

James said she’d been out for two days and Steve’s mottled chest looked more like a truck had struck him repeatedly. Hell it hadn’t look quite that bad after James shot and stabbed him on the hellicarrier.

“I thought I heard your voice.” The quiet words pulled her attention upward and Steve gave her a slow gentle smile.

“Hey…” she said gently, and stopped pushing against James’ immovable hand. A part of her wanted to sit and take stock of everything. What happened precisely? Where had that squad come from? It hadn’t just been a standard four-man team. Who brought a damn missile launcher? But more importantly, was Steve all right and had anyone else been hurt?

Steve folded up the towel in his hand and laid it back on the counter before shutting off the light and crossing over to the bed. He eased down onto the side opposite James, and she forced herself to relax against the pillows. It was disconcerting to be flat on her back and pinned when they both loomed over her. She hated to be helpless. Shifting her grip on the blankets, the pull on her hand jerked her attention to the back of her right hand and the IV still tapped down.

Discomfort shivered through her and she clenched her left hand, digging her nails into her palm to keep from reaching over and just ripping the tubing out. There was no ice slithering through her veins. Steve covered her clenched hand with his, and the warmth there yanked her out of encroaching tunnel vision.

“Breathe…the IV is there for hydration and meds. Nothing more than a pain reliever and antibiotics to support your system while you healed.” Steady. Confident and steady. His intensity a match for the same piercing quality in James’ gaze.

“And sedatives,” she reminded him. The muzzy feeling in her brain had retreated, but she hadn’t forgotten the way she kept passing out. Nor how her grip on awareness slipped away no matter how tightly she tried to hold on.

“We needed you to sleep and to be still,” Steve told her without apology. “Helen had to remove a bullet that nicked your spinal cord, it had fragmented and the surgery took about six hours just to clean it out. Then there was swelling and it needed to come down. The best thing in the world for you was sleep.”

“I’m okay,” she told him, it wasn’t a question. Then she wiggled her toes. “See?”

The relief in his expression was palpable as he trailed his gaze down to her bare feet. “Good.”

A knock at the door interrupted and James stood, pointing at Steve. “Stay put.” Then he was across the room. Nat tracked his motion. From her vantage point, she couldn’t miss the gun tucked into a holster at the base of his spine, the blades strapped to his belt, his forearms, and the other gun holstered on his hip. He was also dressed in body armor.

They were secure, right?

James opened the door and a familiar face popped in. Sam gave James a measured look as he held out a tray. Then his gaze collided with hers and there was a hint of a smile there. “Sleeping Beauty is awake?”

“And she still needs rest,” James informed him, shifting his stance to blockade the door. There was movement outside, then more voices.

“She’s awake…?”

“Can she feel her toes?”

“Is she moving?”

“Does she remember what happened?”

“Open the damn door, Barnes.”

Surprise curled through her, and she glanced at Steve who wore a small smile. He was rubbing her hand gently, easing her clenched fingers apart. The care and patience relaxed her grip inch by inch. “Everyone’s been hanging out here waiting to see how you were doing…”

“Everyone?”

Wanda and Sam had seen her.

Black Widow’s out of the bag.

“She still needs rest,” James said. “I’ll take that.” He gripped the tray Sam carried, but wouldn’t open the door wider.

“Hi Sam,” Natasha managed in an effort to side step the argument Sam’s expression promised in light of James’ stubbornness.

“Hey Nat, missed you girl. You okay?”

“Same old, same old. You know how it goes.”

A grin relaxed his face. “Not everyone you know is trying to kill you.”

With a chuckle, she shook her head. “No, just a few.”

“Yeah,” he said sobering, but he’d released the tray and then glanced behind him. “I’ll see you a little later, all right?”

“Sure.” She was already exhausted again, but she squeezed Steve’s hand when Sam retreated and Tony eased through the door followed by Helen, and right on their heels, moving slowly if a little unevenly was Clint.

The last one who’d been off grid was back, and he was safe. She let out a little more of the tension she’d been holding onto.

“Five minutes,” James told them curtly, then shut the door firmly.

“Ease up Terminator, we’re the good guys, remember?” Tony told him, but his gaze locked on her. “You all there Red?”

“Hurt too much to be anywhere else.” The quip earned her a sharp look from James as he carried the tray over to the table and chairs where he’d been sitting.

“Stevie, over here and eat.”

“I’m fine right here,” Steve argued, but Helen gave a little exasperated sigh. The Asian woman wasn’t given to sharp words or harsh expressions, but the clear impatience in her glare as she stared at Steve put Nat’s teeth on edge.

“C’mon, man,” Clint said. “The sooner you eat and let the doc check you both out, the faster both of you get better.”

Mutiny on Steve Rogers was almost as hot as it was irritating.

“Steve…” She said snagging his glare off the others and earning the sight of his expression relaxing a smile, albeit heavy, again. “Eat. You look like hell…” The shadows scored deep beneath his eyes. Had he slept since it happened? Probably not and she didn’t actually know how long James had been back.

“Okay,” he relented. “I’ll be right there.”

“And I’ll be here.” James moved to stand like a forbidding angel on her right, arms folded, and his expression bordering on threatening.

Tony moved to cover the side where Steve had been seated even as Helen approached on her left. The doctor glanced at those present, including Clint who leaned against the door to her room as if he were just hanging out, but the relaxation in his posture was a lie. The grip he kept on the cane and the way he shifted its weight across his fingers told her he was more than ready to respond with lethal force if necessary.

“Hey Doc,” Nat said, needing to defuse the tension in the room before it choked her. Thoughts of being paralyzed were threatening enough.

“Ms. Romanoff, it’s been a while.” Helen gave her a perfectly pleasant smile but it didn’t quite touch her eyes.

“The guys giving you a hard time?” Just like noticing her surroundings and tracking changes in her environment to clock any and all potential threats, she didn’t miss the parts of Cho’s body language that shouted she wanted to be anywhere but in this room. Now whether her reluctance to be present had anything to do with Nat, her condition, or the four men monitoring her every twitch was open for debate. Probably all of the above.

“I’ve had difficult patients before,” Helen told her, her gaze flicking to something above her. Nat tilted her head and followed her gaze. There was a monitor hung there and her vitals were displayed on it. Yeah, that was a decorating choice that could go. “Having difficult family members is fresh—but then you Avengers never do anything by half-measures.”

Family members. A frown tightened Nat’s forehead before she smoothed it away. The slip had to be because of the pain medication. “They mean well.”

“Yes,” Helen said with a sigh. “They do…now, enough about them. Close your eyes for me?”

Nat just stared at her levelly. Closing her eyes meant making herself vulnerable to the doc’s attention, while flat on her back.

“YA budu nablyudat' za ney,” James promised. The warning radiating off his posture suggested he was more than ready to end Helen Cho if she sneezed the wrong way. Probably not the safest place for the doctor to perform her exam, but the capability for such extreme prejudice actually did quiet Nat’s nerves. Still, she glanced from him to Clint, and Clint just nodded once. How many times had he had to threaten Nat to sit still just so they could give her a once over, swearing he wouldn’t leave the room until the docs did?

Steve and Tony were there and what had Steve said earlier? No one had touched her or changed anything out without one or both of them being there.

“Okay,” she said with a long exhale and closed her eyes.

The blanket flipped back more fully from her legs. The air was chilly against them, but she didn’t react. Steady four count inhale, hold for four, exhale for four. Pain could be overcome. Not that she experienced pain.

“Tell me when you feel anything.”

A cold tap against her big toe.

“Big toe, right foot.”

A second tap, this against the ball of her left foot. She acknowledged it. Helen then moved from taping to gentle pokes, then light scrapes. She worked her way up from her feet to ankles, to her calves. Then she tested her hands, fingertips and palms.

Finally, she said, “You are responding properly to physical stimuli. Can you lift your right leg?”

She lifted it off the bed. There was a pull against her lower back. Not painful, but not particularly pleasant.

“Left leg.”

She repeated the motion.

“Curl your toes.”

Sit. Stay. Roll over. Good dog.

“Excellent. I’ll want another MRI of your lumbar spine , but I think we’ve got physical evidence here that the swelling has reduced. Impressive considering the shape you were in forty-eight hours ago.”

No comment.

“Eyes open.” The brisk professional tone sheered off the bald edge of sarcasm, not that Nat minded the latter. If anything, it made Helen seem far more human. Almost as human as when she drooled over Thor.

Blinking her eyes open, she focused on the doc. “Bright light,” was her only warning before a pin light shone in her eyes. She curled her fingers to keep from striking up and removing the object from being so close to her face. “Improved pupil response,” the doc conceded as she finally took the light away. “So let’s go for the most challenging test. How do you feel?”

“Slimy,” Nat admitted. “I’d kill for a shower…and to brush my teeth.”

Helen surprised her with a laugh. “Well, that’s not at all unusual. Any pain? Discomfort?”

Nat shook her head slowly, still cautious of sudden movements. “A little achy, maybe.” It was all she’d admit to.

“Yeah, Doc she could break every bone in her body and just ask for a couple of aspirin.”

Nat flipped Clint off and he grinned.

“But she does have good physical responses.”

Ass.

Still, she smiled and focused on the doctor. “Can I sit up?”

“If you were a normal patient, I’d say no. I’d want you flat on your back for at least another week, but you’re hardly normal and your recovery rate is remarkable.” Then without missing a beat, she added, “And you can all stop the death glares. You said there would be zero research allowed and I couldn’t ask for any test not absolutely required to validate her progress, and I’m _not_.” Then she looked at Nat. “Unless you could be persuaded…”

“Sorry Doc,” Nat told her without an ounce of apology. “I hate tests. I’m more of a pass/fail girl.”

“I rather supposed that would be your answer.” Helen pulled the blanket down, then reached out a hand to put on her elbow. “I’m going to sit you up. Let me do the work.”

Yeah…skeptical didn’t begin to cover it, but Nat nodded.

Aware that Steve had shifted to lean forward and James resettled his weight and even Tony twitched a step closer, she let Helen put an arm around her shoulders and grip her left arm lightly as she pulled her slowly upright.

Almost too slowly.

Finally Nat was sitting and she pulled her legs closer to sit more cross-legged with the blanket over her lap by the time Helen eased away her arm. “How are we feeling?”

“Like I’m not made of spun glass,” she told the doctor with a little more teeth than the woman probably deserved. Light headed, a little, she conceded but not enough worth mentioning. She tested every muscle and shifted where she settled her weight. Her legs were tired, and a little heavy. Her head had that same, weighted feeling, but her vision didn’t fuzz out and she wasn’t in any pain. She probably ached more from lying still than anything else. “Can I take a shower?”

“Not sure you should be on your feet that long…”

“We have a shower chair,” James said bluntly. “And she doesn’t have to walk…”

“I am perfectly capable of making those decisions for myself,” Nat said, again, the words edging toward sharp. “Let the doctor talk. I can decide whether to follow her advice on all on my own.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Clint commented in a dry tone and she satisfied herself with a glare in his direction. “There are four of us and one of you—I think that levels the playing field.”

The corner of her mouth jerked all of its own accord. Helen just gave them all a bland look before shaking her head. “A shower chair would be ideal, if you want to soak in a bath, then make sure you have something to lean against. No matter how fast you’re healing, you still have muscle and nerve trauma.”

Nat ignored the nagging pull in her lower back. Muscle trauma, check. It would heal. And she couldn’t afford to coddle anything too long, as it was, she’d need more gym time to gain back anything she lost in the last couple of days. Her serum kept her healthy and healed her, but it didn’t keep her in top condition.

“Still take it easy for another couple of days and call me if anything changes…we can take out the IV now if you think your pain is manageable. We started stepping down the pain medication yesterday but you are still receiving some. I can trade it out for a prescription.”

“I’ll be fine.” She’d rather have the damn tubing out.

It took everything Nat had to not rip the IV out herself, instead she endured Helen removing it, then Dr. Cho set her sights on Steve.

To her surprise, he didn’t brush the doctor off or maybe it was the firm glare James transferred from her to him that kept him still as Helen tested his ribs. The bruising looked worse than it was, she determined and that he needed another couple of days of rest as well, but she expected he’d be healed fully in no time.

“I’ll walk Helen out,” Tony said. “Then I’ll be back.” But he still paused at the side of the bed and slipped the bracelet back on Nat’s wrist. With two taps, it was locked into place.

She just gave him a look which he gamely ignored before Clint opened the door and let them out. Conversation in the other room halted, but she caught Wanda’s voice, Sam’s—Rhodey, and Vision. So they were all out there.

“Is Peter okay?” she asked as the door closed.

“Spider-Punk is fine, worried about you and at school currently,” James motioned to the window. “Thirty percent please, Friday.”

“Of course, Sergeant Barnes.” The blacked out windows brightened and showed a cloudy, but definitely daytime skyline beyond. “It is good to see you awake, Ms. Romanoff. If you’re hungry, I can order you something from any restaurant you like.”

“A sandwich is fine,” she answered. “I’d rather have a shower and a debrief though…”

“You can wait on the debrief,” Steve said before anyone else could answer. He carried a bottle of water over and eased down to sit on the bed before handing it to her. “Right now you focus on you.”

She wanted to argue but the pained look in Steve’s eyes shut her up, and she took the water. “Fine, but I’m not going to stop asking questions.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less, doll,” James drawled, the harsh and taut lines of his face relaxing as he studied her.

“Chances of me being allowed to walk into the bathroom under my own steam?”

Two sets of baleful looks and Clint rolling his eyes made her groan.

“Fine.” A number of unfriendly terms danced through her head and she kicked them all off the stage. She finished most of the water in the bottle, and she still needed to pee so she glanced at James. “Would you be so kind as to help me into the bathroom?”

Steve was bruised and Clint’s leg was still healing.

“That wasn’t so hard was it?” Steve teased her and she made a face.

“It sucks.”

He laughed, pressing a hand to his chest to try and suppress the noise, but the chuckle rumbled out of him. Then Clint snickered, and finally even James laughed.

“That’s it—laugh it up. See how you like it if you weren’t even allowed the dignity of being able to piss on your own.”

“I had a catheter,” Clint pointed out. “Whine at someone else.”

Just sitting was wearing her out, but she wasn’t passing out again before she had a shower. Steve eased up and then James circled the bed. When he would have just picked her up, she glared.

“Help. Not carry.”

“You haven’t even been on your feet…”

“And I can feel my feet and my legs. Help. _Not_ carry.” They wanted her to cooperate, she’d give it a go but she drew the line at being treated as helpless. She refused to be helpless—two days of being kept unconscious cured her of any desire to persist in that direction.

James met her stare for stare, but it was Steve who put a hand on his shoulder, as he said, “Ease up,” that got him to relent.

“You can afford to indulge us, Natalia.”

“Not really,” she countered, then unfolded her legs and made her way gingerly to the side of the bed aware of both half reaching out to her. When she reached the edge, she set her feet on the floor and took a moment to catch her breath.

That little bit of movement was hardly worth getting winded over. Then she pushed her weight onto her feet as she went to stand. She didn’t even get to steady herself before James had a hand under her elbow and Steve rested his fingertips lightly at her shoulder as if ready to catch her.

“I’m fine…slow, but fine,” she added the amendment because she really wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

Clint buried another chuckle behind his hand and didn’t look the least bit chastised when she glared at him. Then putting one foot in front of the other she began the long walk to the bathroom. At the doorframe, she braced a hand and then said, “I can manage the first part on my own.”

For a moment, she thought James was going to fight her on this, but he finally just folded his arms and said, “Don’t lock the door.”

“You’d just kick it in if I did.” His concern left her bristling, and she didn’t want to explore why too closely. It probably wasn’t him, but they needed to stop hovering. She was keeping it together.

Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take a breath then said, “I’m apparently in a bad mood, so I’m just going to keep my opinions to myself for a few minutes.”

“Don’t hold back on my account, doll. I can take it.” For a split-second a smile flashed across his eyes and it was the first genuine sight of James he’d shown since she woke.

“Doesn’t mean you deserve it.” Then she touched a hand to his arm, and another to Steve’s before easing into the bathroom and closing the door.

Thankfully, who’d ever tucked her into the bed had skipped the misery of a hospital gown and put her in an oversized t-shirt. The lack of panties meant she didn’t need to do a lot of bending to get them off. And after she emptied her bladder, then washed her hands and brushed her teeth, she relented. “Ready for my shower now.”

They’d given her a modicum of privacy, and she was already sagging.

James let himself in, and left the door partially open. “Clint’s going for food for you, anything you want in particular?”

“Sandwiches are fine, really,” she said. Not sure she had the energy to eat much regardless of what it was. It must have been clear because James just gave her a long look, and shook his head.

“Stubborn woman.”

“Yep,” she agreed with him. “But you win, help me shower.”

He stripped off his clothes without a word, after shutting the door and got the shower running. Hell, she was too tired to appreciate the show. Once the water was warm, he manhandled her gently onto the seat and she closed her eyes as the hot water sluiced over her. Surgical tape covered her shoulder and he eased that off under the water. With careful fingers, he explored the fresh skin on the scar. It was tender, but not painful. After he washed her hair—where she almost did fall asleep as he massaged her scalp—he checked the bandaging on her back. That was a great deal more tender, and she couldn’t completely suppress a flinch.

“Hurts?” James asked, kneeling next to her.

“A little.”

A careful stroke of his fingers around it. “The wound is closed, but it did nick the spine that could be nerves.”

“I can walk, I can live with a little pain.” There was a huff of breath and she squinted at him. It was as though he were both with her and holding himself at a distance. “I’m really going to be okay, James.”

“You got shot—three times—while I was gone, this after a four man team tried to scoop you up with a tranquilizer designed to take down an elephant—the guy you hit with it by the way is going to make it—barely.” He did not sound pleased by this fact. “Then a second team tried to _blow_ you up after they shot you, and then you took a nasty fall and smacked your head around.” He drifted his touch up to her head, and probed gently against her temple. It was a little tender, less than her back and more than her shoulder. Two teams. That made more sense, a little. “You had a knot here the size of my fist and the doc considered bore holes to reduce the swelling on your brain if it hadn’t begun to reduce when it did.”

“So what I hear you saying is just another day in the field,” she tried to make light of it, but the scorching look in his eyes shut her up. He gripped her nape and stared at her with such hot intensity she went still. There was nothing kind or gentle in that glare, it was all predatory heat and primal demand.

“Don’t. Make. It. A. Joke.” He clipped out each word like he fired them at a moving target.

“It’s not a joke,” she assured him, then cupped his cheek. Her tiredness fled in the face of so much anger bubbling under the surface. James had been many things since coming to them from Wakanda, but this rage—that hadn’t been there. “But I have to laugh. I have to…I have to shake it off. This is how I survive. You know what it was like…”

“Yes,” he said it with such a weight of conviction she had to swallow around a sudden lump in her throat. “I do and it’s _never_ going back to that, Natalia. Never. You getting hurt isn’t just something we shake off to get to the next mission. It’s something we work to prevent from ever happening again.”

“Hey…” Now he was worrying her. She cupped his face and dragged his gaze up to hers. “These things happen…I’m not the most popular girl these days.” Not that she ever had been, though she’d always been able to fade into obscurity before hidden beneath layers of aliases. “But I’m damn hard to kill…you should know that.”

Something she didn’t recognize moved in those pale eyes and he nodded a little. “I wasn’t here,” he admitted finally. “I should have been. If I had been…”

“There is no guarantee the same things wouldn’t have happened. The whole team came out for me…” And wasn’t that a thing of wonders? “Tony even suited me up, and I still don’t know how they dropped the suit.” She’d seen him take more than his fair share of hits and stay in the air.

“EMP,” James said, his voice almost wooden. Yeah, he'd said that earlier. She needed to work on her focus. “If I’d been here…”

“Stop it.” She pressed her finger to his lips. “You’re here now. I’m here. We’re together.” For as long as that would last…the team knew she was here, did that mean the government figured it out? Were they on borrowed time before the strike teams arrived to take her into custody?

“I can’t lose you again. I won’t.” He swallowed, then pressed his lips to hers. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, just a hard, firm acknowledgement they were both there. The water spilled over them, and she swore it washed away tears from his cheeks, but she couldn't be certain and didn't want to push him. Not while this mood held him hostage.

She wanted to promise him he wouldn’t lose her, but when had they ever lived in a world where she could keep those kinds of promises? So she settled for saying, “I’m here.” Then held him as he cradled her to his chest. Finally, when her hands had gone wrinkly like a prune, he reached back to shut it off, then wrapped her in a towel. Steve was waiting for them in the bedroom—and thankfully only Steve.

Apparently Tony and Clint were waiting for the word on when they could return. Between James and Steve, they helped her into a clean shirt. Steve pulled her panties up for her, then toweled the moisture from her hair while James dressed again. He combed his hair back from his face, and they got her set up in the bed, propped against pillows and tucked in.

Steve set a tray over her lap with a pair of sandwiches, fruit slices, a bag of chips, and a large mug of hot tea.

No way could she eat all of this, so she cradled the mug of tea and then looked from one man to the other where they’d positioned themselves on opposite corners at the foot of the bed, neither quite looking at the other, but watching her. They watched her as she sipped the tea, and even as she worked her way through half of one of the sandwiches. Yes, she needed to eat, her body needed energy from somewhere but eating also required energy.

The silence in the room elongated, dragging taut until it seemed to filter every bite of food or sip of her tea with an aftertaste of tension. Steve had settled one of his hands on her foot and the weight of it through the blanket was a comfort, a reminder that despite a bullet to her back—when had she even gotten that?—she was _fine_. The Red Room had done one thing right by her, she supposed. Still, the longer they just sat there, watching her…

Maybe the world had turned upside down, but something else was going on. It was more than James’ reaction in the shower, and the very real fear shivering under his skin. Attachment…they were all getting too damn attached and a part of her wanted to call a halt right now. But the rest of her fought that rebellious piece, and in the back of her mind, she could almost hear the quiet voice ticking off all the reasons why her lack of action was going to cost them all.

Fucking brain needed to shut up.

“What is going on with you two?

“You wanted to debrief,” James said, evading the subject as adroitly as she would. Don’t answer the question or simply reframe it to one you could answer and most of the time people moved right on. “We’re thinking you should rest more first.”

Steve, on the other hand, just gave James a long, harsher stare before he said, “Yes, we do think you should rest and no, I don’t think debriefing is a good idea right now. You have enough on your plate.”

Which meant they knew something more than they were sharing.

“Guys…what’s going on?”

“Wanda wants to know when she can see you,” Steve said without moving. “Sam, too.”

She’d seen Sam at the door, and heard Wanda in the other room.

“Spider-Punk is going to be here as soon as school is out, we haven’t been able to keep him from planting in the front room unless Tony drags him to the lab.” James folded his arms. Had he resumed to disapproving of Peter?

“Stop it…” She said, setting the mug down, then looking back and forth between them. “Why are you two fighting?”

Because that was it. They weren’t looking at each other unless the other one was looking away and those glares were heated. Steve was _not_ happy with James, and James was angry with Steve?

Neither answered, instead James frowned and looked past her but Steve glanced down at his hands.

James _had_ spoken to Steve earlier. Told him to eat. So maybe they were just overtired and cranky? She sure the fuck was. The shadows under Steve’s eyes were matched only by the shadows under James’.

“We’re not fighting…” James said finally.

“Bullshit,” Steve snapped, and this time their glares collided. “We are fighting. But we’re also…” he added dragging his gaze to her. “Trying to keep it civil, because we’re both worried about you.”

“I told you I had to go…I had to figure some things out before I brought them up here.” James’ tone was all kinds of icy.

“You don’t disappear without a word, you leave a note or you send a message. Instead, we get a call from Tony saying you’re fucked off to who knows where…” Hostility edged Steve's tone. “That means Nat now has to deal with that and the fact Tony can track you using the kill switch. Which she didn’t even _know_ was there.”

James shrugged. “The kill switch was necessary then, and it had nothing to do with her taking hits on the street—while you were _right next to her._ ”

“Hits she wouldn’t have taken if we’d still been in Canada instead of recalled _here_ because _you_ were missing.”

Maybe it was the fact they were both angry, but she calmed. It wasn’t just the rage, though, it was the fear and the shock and the worry.

“Stop it,” she said quietly arresting both of their gazes as they landed on her. “I got shot. It happens. We’re not exactly in the safest line of work. If you two are going to do this every time I get hurt, we’ve got bigger issues.” She didn’t want either of them hurt either, and even though Steve had pulled on a shirt, she hadn’t forgotten the mottled mess of his chest. “From what you’ve said and I remember, there were two teams out there trying to get me…or at least we think it was me. The guys tearing up the street could have been after something else, who knows…the point is—neither of you are at fault.”

“Natalia…” James sighed. “Stevie’s not wrong to be pissed.”

“Neither is Bucky,” Steve admitted. “Neither of us are happy about you being hurt.”

“Neither of you were the ones who did it…so stop it.” They still weren’t looking at each other. “I need you to stop it…I don’t have the energy to kick your asses if you don’t, and if you don’t think I won’t try then you need to remember who you’re talking to.”

That earned her a pair of mismatched grins, and James raked a hand through his hair. He opened his mouth but a knock at the door silenced him and Steve blew out a breath. “Give us a minute,” Steve called, then look from her to James then back again. “We need to talk, or more importantly, Bucky needs to talk.”

James’s expression tightened briefly, then he nodded.

“But we also need this debrief.” Steve pinned her with a look. “Or you won’t rest.”

She nodded slowly, but she couldn’t help but try to weigh James’ expression. Whatever secret Steve had been holding on to for him—that was it. Unease curled inside of her and she wrapped her hands around the mug. “Debrief then…the three of us talk.”

They shared a nod, then Steve rose. “Whatever the hell it is,” he said to her, then focused on James. “We’ll figure it out, right?”

James gave him a small smile, but at least it was a smile. “Not sure it’s something we can figure out punk, but no more secrets.”

“Good.”

Yeah that wasn’t ominous.

Steve opened the door, and said, “Wanda…Sam? You guys can see Nat tomorrow, okay? We’re going to go over the info we have with Tony and Clint, then you guys come back tomorrow.”

It wasn’t a request.

“She’s awake though?” Wanda asked.

“She is, but she’s exhausted and she’s already pushing it.” Apparently the command decision had been made, but she wasn’t arguing with them. She was tired, and the unease knotting in her gut weighed heavier than the silence.

“Sounds good man, call us if we can do anything.”

When Steve stepped away from the door, Tony entered hands in his pockets with Clint behind him. Steve closed the door and then leaned against it, arms folded. “We’re keeping this brief,” he told the other two.

“That’s the plan,” Tony stated, sliding a look from Steve to James, then over to her. He raised his eyebrows. She wasn’t the only one reading the room. “You know Red…you remember the reckless comment I made to you once upon a time?”

“Yes, it was very reckless of me to get shot at, blown up, and thrown from the sky. I’ll work on that.” Yep. The glib seemed to piss him off nearly as much as it did James and if Steve’s grim expression were any barometer, she was three for three. She didn’t have to check with Clint, he knew better.

“Yeah…not going to debate that one. I’m talking about the reckless idiot who broke into Oscorp, stole CQ-A and walked out, knowing full well that stuff reacts to you.”

“I handled it. Did Oscorp send the teams after me?” If they were going to play the accusation game, she would simply point the finger somewhere else.

Tony stared at her and Steve sighed.

“Nat, they were bounty hunters—you remember that 50 million dollar bounty on your head, right?”

“Oh.” No, she really hadn’t. “Let me guess, the bounty was banked so even with Ivanovich aka Smith aka Fenhoff dead, it’s still active.”

“Pretty much.” Clint gave her a dry look. “Not like you to forget that was a possibility.”

“Been a little busy,” she said, but he was right. She knew better. She needed to drain that…

“Well it’s gone now,” Tony said. “I drained the damn account, there is no payoff so they should all vanish hopefully back into the woodwork.”

Or Tony could do that.

“They used a lot of firepower for a bounty that wanted me collected alive.” She frowned. “How many civilians…”

“We’re not doing that part,” Clint interrupted. “We’re debriefing and keeping it quick.”

Leaning her head back against the pillows, she fought the clawing guilt climbing up to tango with her earlier unease.

“Fine,” Tony pulled his hands out of his pockets and motioned to her. “You pulled a sample of CQ-A from Oscorp, it’s a larger one than we’ve seen. You also got a number of pictures of everything in that particular lab including the cubes—I think we know where the one your pal Hagen found in Greenland came from. But Connors and Stillwell are both in the wind, and the lab on 2407 is empty…”

“Did you go in?” She frowned.

“Yeah, I had people go in. Oscorp wants to stay on Stark Industries good side, it doesn’t matter though, we’re tracking Connors and Stillwell now, we’ll find them.”

Great, she’d overplayed that hand. Their disappearance was on her.

Then she recalled the gun Connors pulled on her when she showed up. He was expecting someone else. Someone from Roxxon…

“The tissue samples?”

“I have no clue,” Tony told her. “I’ve got it all locked down, along with _Mycobacterium smegmatis_ Type II you lifted. I just want to point this out—affectionately—we had enough problems before. We didn’t need new ones.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “I can deal with it when I’m on my feet.”

“That’s _not_ what I meant, and you know it.” Tony pointed a finger at her. His face reddened and there was a vein pulsing in his forehead as he began to tick off items with one hand. “Reckless. Idiotic. Dangerous. _Thoughtless._ You could have been killed in there, you had no backup…except the kid and he didn’t know what all was happening and he definitely didn’t know that CQ-A reacts to you—so why was going in while we were gone so damn important? Why couldn’t you wait for us?”

“Stark…” Clint said quietly, and Nat didn’t glance at him as she held Tony’s stare very well aware of James’ absolute stillness at the foot of the bed and the fact Steve stood not a foot away, arms folded. “We’re debriefing, not tearing her a new one.” Then he pinned her with a look. “Even if some hardheaded fools deserve it.”

“Bite me,” she retorted.

“Bare it and share it,” Clint countered. She glared, but he only smiled. “Don’t scare me, kid. Never have. Never will.”

Rolling her eyes, she flopped her head back and blew out a breath. “I saw an opportunity to act. I took it. I got in and I got out. I found more of the CQ…”

“Yeah but why the hell did you go _there_ in the first place?” Tony asked. “Why would you suddenly eyeball Oscorp like they were involved?”

Peter hadn’t told them what he’d told her. It was his secret. She wouldn’t break it now. “I had a good reason to go, and a source. I didn’t know how long your mission would take and based on everything else going on, I didn’t want to risk something else going wrong.” And as much as it burned her… “In hindsight, I could have handled it differently.”

Not better.

Not asking for permission.

Not waiting.

She could have just killed Connors and let Stillwell come up and taken him out, too. She could have.

She chose not to.

So yes, she could have handled it differently.

“And since I found those samples—I’m glad I did even if I wish they hadn’t haired off with the others.”

“How many were in that fridge?”

She shook her head slowly. “Too many—it was like there were fifty or sixty.”

Tony blanched. “And they reacted to you?”

“Yep.” She allowed herself a sweep of the room. James didn’t seem surprised so maybe someone had brought him up to date. “But the fridges were lead lined…” She had resources she could tap, too. Wherever Connors and Stillwell had gone, they had to find them.

“How did your mission go?”

“CQ-A neutralized but it was one tanker.” He didn’t have to say it. There were far more that left the facility than one. “Before you ask, no leads on the others. I think the one we found was a distraction.”

“And the incident on the streets?”

“Team knows, the public doesn’t—papers are loving the fact Rogers saved my life.” Tony smirked. “They are all about how great it is the Avengers have come together.”

“And the bounty hunters aren’t talking?” Because they had to have been watching for her. Had they taken a risk because they thought she looked like herself or were they planning the snatch and grab on the off chance they were right? Then the team that tried to kill her? How did that get them a bounty? Fenhoff definitely wanted her alive, and they were trying to blow her up—Tony was right they had enough problems.

Wait…

“They hit the armor with the EMP to take Tony out.”

Clint laughed softly and shook his head. “I told you guys, she wasn’t going to miss it for long.”

“I wasn’t the only target out there…” She eyed Tony.

“Hey, I’m popular what can I say…we’re not worried about it. I’m not the one who got shot or concussed…so we call it a win and move on.”

She frowned. “You’re upping your security, right?”

“I will if you will,” Tony straightened. She knew a dismissal when she heard one, but she wasn’t going to let it go. For now, maybe but if there was a price on Tony Stark’s head, that usually brought out the crazies. “That’s the debrief for now.”

“Wait…”

“No, short debrief.” Steve stated emphatically.

“Not that I’m letting go of Tony being targeted,” she said bluntly with a look at Tony. “Because I’m not. I will concede I’m not in a position to look right now. That will change.”

With an aggrieved expression, Tony motioned her to continue.

“How is the team taking the news?”

“In short order,” Clint said. “Wanda’s thrilled, Sam’s bemused and reserving judgment, Rhodey’s pissed, and Vision is TBD.”

“Platypus will be fine, he’s just worried about me and a little aiding and abetting. No one else I’d rather aid or abet, so don’t sweat it. Now rest.” Tony headed for the door.

“Thank you, Tony,” she said quietly and he paused at the door.

“You’re welcome Red—stop trying to die on me. I don’t like it.” Then he was out of the room and Clint straightened. The sitting room beyond her bedroom was quiet. The others must have gone to their own floors as asked.

The elevator ding announced its arrival, and then the soft swish of the doors closing said Tony made swift with his escape.

“Clint you’re looking…”

“Ten Rings and other known associates?” He gave her a reproachful look. “I got Stark covered. You worry about you.”

She nodded, then glanced at Steve and James, neither had moved through the whole thing so they had to have known the basic data and the need to _talk_ loomed over them.

Clint leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, balancing carefully with his cane, then he glanced at James. “You need me to stay for this part?”

This part? He knew whatever it was.

James shook his head. “I got it…”

Something passed between them and she wasn’t the only one who noticed. Steve frowned.

Then Clint gave her hair a light tug. “You know where I am…text me, I’ll come to you.” He was looking at her. “Then we’re calling Laura and the kids.”

“You didn’t…”

“I didn’t tell her. But she’s worried, and I think you need to hear them as much as they need to hear from you. No arguments.” Then he made his way to the door. “You guys take it easy.” He glanced from her to Steve and then James. “It’s been a hell of a few days. So one step at a time.”

After the elevator dinged signaling his exit did Steve move. The slow deliberateness to his actions suggested he was aching more than he let on. Maybe they should form the silently in pain club. He took the tray and set it aside before easing down to sit next to her, when he took her hand, she interlaced her fingers with his, then held out her other hand for James.

They could elect James their club leader, because now that she was looking for it, she couldn’t miss the pain etched into his expression or how it hovered in the air around him.

He shifted on the mattress and came up to sit closer but he faced them rather than lean against the pillows like she was.

No one said anything, and she curled her fingers around theirs and just held them.

“James…”

“I need a minute,” he said, glancing down at their hands.

“Okay.” It wasn’t, not when she _knew_ something was wrong. Couldn’t miss it for all the world. But she wouldn’t push him. She ran her thumb against his, tracing the callouses from years of handling weapons. They were like that, calloused and toughened in places because they had no choice, it was that or die. Sometimes it made her more stubborn, but other times it just reminded her she could survive and that there was always a way to get a job done.

She just had to find it.

“I remembered,” James said finally.

“What did you remember?” Some of her memories when they surfaced weren’t always pleasant…

“Everything,” he said, moistening his lips. “I—I remembered when we were in Louisiana.” His troubled gaze came up to meet hers. “All of it, Natalia…from Brooklyn to Moscow to DC.”

The breath stopped in her lungs. “And you didn’t want to tell me?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t that…I promise I just…I told Steve then begged him not tell you. I needed…I needed to talk to someone, but I needed to figure some things out before I told you.”

“Okay,” she said squeezing his hand. That was what had torn at Steve. He knew and she didn’t. “He’s your friend, you—you’re allowed to tell him whatever you want.”

“Don’t make this easy on me, doll,” James told her, his eyes were gleaming and wet. “You don’t have to make anything easy for me.”

“I’ll do whatever the hell I want,” she told him firmly. “I can’t imagine how hard that had to be…” She wanted her memories back, but even she could drown in them and he’d gotten them all back? No wonder he’d seemed so distant.

He let out a wet laugh. “You…you never fail to amaze me.”

“Good. I need some points in the pro column for when you guys frown at me for doing reckless stuff.”

“You said you had some things you had to verify,” Steve prompted him, squeezing her hand.

James met Steve’s gaze and seemed to draw some strength as he nodded. “Yeah…Natalia…there is no easy way to say this. Know I did everything to verify that what I remember is true…”

He remembered something about her.

“…Clint…Clint helped me. That’s where we went.”

Had she done something to him?

“Fuck,” he exhaled.

“Hey,” she said, leaning forward and ignoring the pull on her back. Steve let go of her hand and she gripped James’ right hand with both of hers. “It’s okay. Whatever it is…I’m not going anywhere…we’ll figure it out.”

He pulled out of her grasp and wrenched himself off the bed to pace across the room. She glanced at Steve but he shook his head. “Buck…”

“Steve…give me a sec…” With his back to them, he had his hands on his hips and he sucked in a deep breath, and blew it out. Then another…

She pushed at the blanket, and Steve stood offering her a hand to help her up. She threw him a grateful look and let him put her on her feet, he was faster than she was at the moment. It took her a moment, but she made it to James and threaded her arms around him ignoring the holster on his lower back digging into her belly. She didn’t care about the pull on her back or the exhaustion or anything else. He was hurting.

He covered her hands on his abdomen with one of his own. “In 1971…we ran.” The words looped around her, locking her in place. “You came to me and said we had to go, you had to run…and you wanted me to go with you.”

Dread thundered with her pulse.

“We ran…made our way from Russia to Egypt to Spain to France to Canada…” His voice cracked, then he straightened, and turned slowly easing around so he didn’t pull at her. He fixed his gaze on her, and the tears in his eyes wrenched her. “You made all the arrangements, put together our IDs and I covered our exodus. We had no choice but to run, but you wouldn’t leave me behind even if it would have been safer for you to go alone.”

She wouldn’t leave him. The screaming as she fought Leonid when they were putting him in the chair—she believed it.

“I’m guessing we didn’t get away for long?”

“No…we did. For almost two years…it was you and me…and our daughter.”

Daughter?

“You were pregnant, Natalia. I don’t know how it happened—but you were and you figured it out. You wouldn’t stay to let them have our child, so you had to get her away and we did…in Montana…I found our cabin…”

The roaring in her head threatened to drown out his words.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

“I wish I could tell you it was…”

She pulled back a step, and bumped right into Steve who steadied her and then put a hand on James’ shoulder. “I can’t—they sterilized…”

“Natalia,” James told her, gaze fixed on hers and the raw unvarnished truth shown in them. “You were pregnant and we had a daughter.”

Had.

Had.

Not have.

Had.

Then where was she?

Fuck.

No.

She shook her head. It wasn’t possible. Steve’s arm was around her middle and she didn’t even realize he was holding her up and until James braced her, too. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, then pulled her close and she buried her face against his chest even as her mind whirled dizzingly.

It wasn’t possible.

Was it?


	46. Helix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat copes with learning the truth...

**Chapter Forty-Six**

**Helix**

**Natasha**

 

 

_You were pregnant._

_We had a daughter._

_Pregnant._

_You said we had to go._

_Pregnant._

_You had to run._

_Pregnant._

_You wanted me with you._

_They came for us._

_I lead them away. I told you to take Mary Elizabeth and run._

_Run._

_Pregnant._

_We had a daughter._

_Mary Elizabeth._

James’ words played on an endless loop, and no matter how she framed them, they didn’t make any more sense now than when he’d told her. He wasn’t lying. The raw, unvarnished truth had spilled out him. Once the dam had broken, he’d told her the rest.

From Russia to Egypt.

From Egypt to Spain.

From Spain to France.

Then France to Canada.

Time spent in Toronto, then Hamilton, and even Niagara Falls.

The inexplicable sadness when she looked at the Falls? The not quite yearning to go, but always finding an excuse to just not? Latent emotional reaction?

 _Dopamine, epinephrine, oxytocin, serotonin…_ She listed the chemicals that created emotion. The amygdala released the chemicals. Chemicals that could lead to anger, haste, impulsiveness…

Until…

_Pregnant._

It was impossible. But James wasn’t lying.

How did a person get pregnant once then never again?

It just…

“Natalia,” James said her name with absolute care, the way one approached the mentally deranged holding a live grenade as they laughed with the voices only they could hear.

 _Pregnant._ When the limbic system, the seat of emotion hijacked control from the frontal cortex, the seat of logic it took twenty minutes for the resulting hormone imbalance to rectify.

It had been an hour.

Sixty minutes.

Three thousand six hundred seconds.

Three times the time it should have taken.

Her resulting hormone imbalance had not fucking rectified.

“Doll…talk to me.”

 _Norepinephrine. Dopamine. Serotonin. Oxytocin. Vasopressin._ Chemicals released that regulated attraction and attachment. Funny how close to the ones that regulated anger, impulsiveness, and haste.

“Hey, Buck…give it a minute for both of you. You’ve had a few days with this and you just dropped a live grenade on her.” Steve’s comment wasn’t funny. It wasn’t even an attempt at humor. The dragging sadness under it threatened to drown them all. Then again…it was so close to echoing her comment about the mentally deranged and their live grenade.

Impossible.

Graduation ceremony involved sterilization. Madame B had her sterilized they’d—they’d done a procedure. Just another procedure in a long litany of them. Icy cold metal gurney. Rolling through cold hallways, then into a sterile room with it's cloying, throat-clogging smell of antiseptic and then the mask with the too sweet air that made her teeth ache and her stomach revolt.

“Fuck me Steve…I argued with myself about telling her.” James spoke in a voice turned raw and rough, as if he’d been strangled for hours. “But I couldn’t _not_. I couldn’t keep this…a secret…and maybe that was selfish of me.”

Waking seconds, minutes, hours, sometime days later—had it ever really mattered?—and there had been pain. Pain along her side. An incision.

“Buck, she’s—it’s a shock.” Steve was firm at his side. He’d tried to be firm at hers but she’d walked away. The window. Overlooking the city. It seemed a reasonable place to go. To think. “I think you’re in shock, too. I can’t begin to imagine—for either of you.”

She would heal in a couple of days. Until then, she was excused from her regular workouts. Congratulations Black Widow.

“And how are you?” James turned his concern on his friend. He needed someone to take care of and she was not available currently. She didn’t blame him for asking, Steve struggled with the darkness in their world. His best friend. He and Steve. Best friends from schoolyard to battlefield to Natasha Romanoff’s bedroom. Look how far they’d come.

_The ceremony is necessary for you to take your place in the world._

_I have no place in this world._

“Pal, I don’t—I’m wrecked for both of you. I don’t even know where to begin…”

_In the Red Room, where I was trained, where I was raised, um, they have a graduation ceremony. They sterilize you. It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier. Even killing. You still think you're the only monster on the team?_

“That makes two of us.” James was hurting.

_Might matter more than the mission._

“And you have no idea…?” Where she’d gone. She took their daughter and now…

_Might matter more._

“No. It was another year before I saw her again and after all the wipes, I barely fucking knew her. She was a mission….she didn’t matter except to bring in. The worst part is she knew me—I can see it as clearly right now as I couldn’t process then. She killed every single member of that team except me, and when she realized I wasn’t there, she just…gave up and let me take her.” He hated himself. He shouldn’t. Her choice, right?

_Might matter._

Steve’s sigh carried across the room. “I hate these people. I didn’t think it was physically possible to hate anyone or anything _this_ much.”

_Might._

“It’s more than possible.” Cold. Harsh. Unforgiving. She got that. They were what they’d been made after all.

_Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?_

“Nat?” Steve was right behind her. “Angel? Come on…maybe just sit back down? You’re still healing.”

_You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers._

“I shouldn’t have told her.” James hurt. James had been hurting. He left to go find some magical fairytale they’d escaped into. Escaped? No, not really. A respite, a holiday to a pipe dream. How much of a fool had she been to think the Red Room would let her go? Let _him_ go? She had to kill her way out. Years of red lines added to a crimson ledger and she had tried to have a place in the world…

 _You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will_ never _go away!_

Here she was doing it again.

Turning away from the window, she glanced up to meet the wild concern in Steve’s eyes. Steady. He’d been rock steady since James spilled everything. The so-called pregnancy and flight. The escape to the U.S. The drive to Montana—Montana, it was the middle of nowhere and they’d lost themselves there. Then somehow they’d been found…

How?

James didn’t know the answer to that question.

They’d gotten lazy? They lived _off_ grid, he traveled to different places for supplies, and she had apparently never left it after her pregnancy showed or after their daughter had been born. So how then?

Did it matter?

James went after them, sacrificing himself so she could escape.

Yes it fucking mattered. How had they screwed up? What colossal hubris had they engaged in…

Stupid plan. Why didn’t they just take out the hit teams together and run after?

Because that would have risked the baby to exposure. And she had likely lost some flexibility and maneuverability? How much had she trained on their little hidden mountain?

So maybe not so stupid plan.

A year.

A year after they took him she let him take her.

Or he thought she did. He thought she’d come back to get him but there’d been no recognition, and she’d let them take her and wipe her rather than betray their child.

Three years she’d been free and she’d gone back for him and abandoned her kid.

Why?

 _Attached…_ the word whispered out of a traitorous little corner. _That’s what happens when you get attached._

Because she had no place in the world, and she knew it.

“Friday?”

“Yes, Ms. Romanoff?” She was so subdued.

Fuck.

“Has Tony been listening?” There was rigid silence from the other two. Steve’s expression bordered on the closest thing to murderous she’d ever seen him wear. He hadn’t looked that angry when they’d found out about Hydra being embedded in SHIELD.

“I want to tell you no, Red…” Contrition turned Tony Stark’s voice into the one thing she’d never heard him be. Humble. “I stopped when it sunk in what he was saying, but—by then…”

By then he’d heard the worst of it.

“Dammit, Tony…” Steve glared at the ceiling. “You wanted to know why I want to move us out of here?”

“You’re right,” Tony said, his voice so solemn. “I’m sorry…”

She just…she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t even dredge up the aggravation. “I need to see Helen Cho, is she still in the Tower?”

Steve’s anger morphed to concern. “What?”

“Are you hurting?” James was there, a warm hand on her icy cold skin. Who was the Winter Soldier here? “You should lie down…”

She raised a hand and they both stopped. It was like the world of jagged points had all been smoothed down and there was a translucent wall as thick and dense as marble between her and the rest of the world. Her hijacked amygdala remained firmly in rebellion, so she had to do something.

“Is she still here, Tony?”

“Yeah, I asked her to stay until we could give you the all clear and so I could monitor what she was doing—and make sure she didn’t try to turn you in.”

That was—whatever. She actually no longer cared about being turned in. In the great, grand scheme of things it seemed like the lesser of all the problems on her plate.

“Can you ask her to meet me in the med bay?” They had all the toys. Probably where they’d done her MRI.

“Nat,” Steve said, gripping her upper arms, and belatedly she realized she was in the middle of the sitting room on her way to the elevator. “Slow. Down.”

“I can get her…”

“Stark, fuck off for a solid minute and stop fucking listening to us.” James was right behind her, a solid presence at her back.

“I’ll be in the med bay—with Helen…and I’ll call Clint.”

 _“You know where I am…text me, I’ll come to you Then we’re calling Laura and the kids.”_ James had told him. Clint knew.

“Voice activated only mode, Friday,” Steve said. “And I mean it, total privacy, shut it all down.”

“Of course, Captain Rogers. Voice activated only.”

Then the silence blanketed them.

She lifted her chin and met Steve’s gaze. “I can’t do this right now,” she told him, sinking into the Widow with every fiber and scrape she could put together. The armor fit her like a second skin. It was her second skin.

Or maybe it was the first.

When the rest of her was scraped raw and bloody, the Widow was hers. She’d earned it in bone, blood, and sweat.

“We’re not asking you to,” James said, and then the gentle weight of his forehead touched against the back of her head. Not quite leaning on her, not trusting the weight of himself to her. “Tell us what’s going on…why Helen?”

They were so hot, like twin furnaces and it didn’t begin to touch the cold layering around her.

“You said I was pregnant…”

“Yes.”

“I believe you.” No. She really didn’t.

“No you don’t.”

“I need to know if it’s even possible…”

“So you’re going to the doc to…have tests?” The guarded notes there. She deserved them. She hated tests. Hated doctors.

Experiments.

Sterilization.

Serum.

All so-called doctors.

“Yes.” She met Steve’s gaze steadily. “I’m apparently not an expert on me. I need answers.” Because she couldn’t get her amygdala back on board. There was a piercing pain stabbing through the back of her eyes and if she focused on it too long, she was going to black out. Pain could be overcome.

It had to be overcome.

“Okay,” James said slowly, and he rested his hands against her hips. The contact on all sides should ground her and in truth, all she wanted was for them to just move. But that would be cruel. They didn’t deserve cruelty.

“Yeah—robe, yeah? Something warmer?” Steve suggested. She glanced down. Oversized t-shirt and panties with bare legs.

“I’ll get one.” James vanished from her back. Steve rubbed slow circles against her upper arms with his thumbs as they waited. Soothing motions that didn’t sooth. They just…they barely touched her.

She needed her brain back on board. They had…

Brain.

BARF.

The guys wouldn’t go for it, but if she could get to the items, she could use it. Mine past whatever blocks they’d burned into the gray matter inside her skull and find the answers.

That…that was a plan.

Using it before had healed 4% of her brain. Maybe it would again. 

James slid her right arm into the sleeve of a heavier terry cloth robe, then her left, and Steve tied it at the waist, then James knelt and Steve braced her as he pulled her socks on.

Only the pain in James’ eyes matched the deep concern etched into his features. He was hurting. The reminder cut at her. This was why it had been so hard for him to tell her. Steve—bless Steve, he stood like a damn rock in the midst of all of it, a place for them to land but she wasn’t even sure she knew how to swim in these seas.

“One thing a time,” she said slowly. “I hate doctors. I didn’t do tests…I’ve never even asked what was done to me.”

Not once.

There was an exam when she’d come to SHIELD. An exam she’d endured, and then ignored as much as possible. The results had all been destroyed though. As far as she knew, Fury had honored that request. The absence of evidence kept Hydra off of her, or maybe they hadn’t needed the evidence, still—they’d left her alone until what? They could activate her?

Dizzying thought.

She’d been right at Steve Rogers’ back, but they didn’t have her triggers then.

Triggers Ivan made sure were his alone.

Backstabbing bastards each throwing their own leash into the flames so no one else could grasp it.

Off topic. Not the issue at the moment. She blinked, and squared her shoulders. “I’m fine to walk.”

“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. “Doesn’t mean you can’t lean on me anyway.”

Yes it really did, but she let him hook her arm through his and then James was at her other side and they headed for the elevator. When it opened, Clint was standing right there and he looked at the three of them and shook his head. “C’mon.”

Relief threaded through the chaos and she moved to lean against the elevator wall. Rock steady, Clint didn’t try to fill the air with meaningless platitudes. What the hell could he say? _So—turns out you might be a mom after all, weird right?_

Awareness of James’ scrutiny vied with the watchful protectiveness rolling off Steve. He’d taken a stance at the front of the elevator, physically standing between them and whatever might be on the other side.

What a life—James had his memories back and it should be a cause for some celebration. He was _whole_ again. What they’d taken from him, he’d cobbled back together. Instead, a brand new nightmare landed in his lap.

Their laps.

She should offer him something, some word of comfort. He kept looking at her—was there expectation in his eyes to go with the concern? Or just radiating worry because she couldn’t even be human in her reaction to his revelation?

All too soon they arrived on the med bay floor, it shared space with one of Bruce’s old labs. She hadn’t been down here in…

Well…since Bruce disappeared.

Steve took the first step out and there was no mistaking the tension in his shoulders or how he carried himself. He was ready for an attack or maybe a fight. No, he and Tony didn’t need to fight over the eavesdropping. Yes, he shouldn’t have done it but at least it meant she didn’t have to find a way to explain the tests she wanted done. He would get it.

Then again, there was stiffness in those movements, too. He needed to rest and heal. But instead he was down here with her because she needed answers.

They needed answers.

Tony and Helen were standing inside the open doors to the medical bay with all of its white sterile walls, and comfortable beds rather than gurneys—definitely an improvement even if she still didn’t want to be here—and every possible toy and piece of equipment on the market, and probably a few Tony designed himself.

He liked to have the best.

“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, focused on her. He glanced to Steve and the open glare on Steve’s face made no bones about his displeasure.

Brushing a hand against Steve’s arm, she said, “Don’t…we have enough real problems to fight. No fighting each other.”

Not again.

She did not have the energy for that.

Almost at once the ballooning tension released.

“Okay,” Steve told her, and he gave her fingers a squeeze. “What do you need?”

“I’m going to talk to Helen…and you four—figure something out…” She’d say work on the CQ-A problem or the missing scientist problem or maybe just… Then she looked at James. “Take care of him. He really shouldn’t be alone.” James frowned at her, but she faced Helen.

If she didn’t say this now, she might get back on the damn elevator and ride it to the bottom floor and disappear.

A dozen different paths to vanishing filtered through the cloud of noise flooding her brain. Safe houses. Routes. Supplies. Her bank accounts would be flush. Isaiah could set her up somewhere nice and warm. A beach maybe. Work on her tan.

Go be someone else.

Natasha Romanoff was… _tired._

“Hey Doc,” the Widow said to Helen as the doctor studied her. The Widow could do this because Natasha would rather slit her wrists than endure a round of poking, prodding, and medical investigation. Unfortunately, this was the mission, so she’d rely on the training that never allowed her to fail a mission. Ever. Professional concern and curiosity made for a fine pairing in the woman’s mostly placid expression. “It’s your lucky day—I want you to run all the tests on me.”

She didn’t glance at Tony or acknowledge the fierce frown, concern and the element of regret. She didn’t face Steve and the stoic strength he’d offer without reservation. Nor did she focus on James and the dark hole of suffering she imagined held him captive. Natasha had nothing for them. Not yet. Not—not right now. What the Widow needed was answers and all she had for any of them were questions.

They’d had enough damn questions.

To her credit, Helen merely nodded and motioned for the Widow to follow her. “What are we looking for?”

“Damn good question,” she said. “I need to know what was done to sterilize me, and to do a full panel of blood work. As you’ve noticed, I heal fast, but I never thought I’d healed the sterilization. As it happens, I received multiple doses of serums over the course of several decades. Not even sure what they poured into my veins…so let’s find out what parts of me are still human shall we?” The glib tone didn’t hit quite the right note. It was hollow, lacked any kind of compassion or empathy.

With a slow nod, Helen studied her. The doctor seemed less disturbed by her tone than the content of her statement. Good scientists did it all, observe, hypothesize, test—wash, rinse, and repeat.

“In the interests of full disclosure, if you’re going to run around and not rest while I run a series of potentially invasive medical tests, then you’re going back on an IV. You’re far too pale.” The doctor pointed her to one of the beds. Bile burned the back of her throat and her stomach cramped, but her legs were on board and they kept moving. Her hijacked amygdala went into overdrive, but she’d fought her way through twenty-eight girls and women who’d received the same training as her and she was the one still standing.

Her amygdala could go fuck itself.

Clint braced her arm before she could sit on the bed, and she glanced at him. The others were all right there and Clint looked at her blandly. “Don’t even. You’re not doing this alone. You want to send Larry, Moe, and Curly to take a walk—fine. But you’re not on your own. I made you a promise, and I intend to fucking keep it.”

Of course, he did.

“You won’t care for it…” Helen said as she set the green hospital gown down. “I’m familiar with most of your objections in the past the detailed notes Dr. Banner put in your file…”

Dr. Banner. She snorted.

She was asking Helen to run the tests, so stabbing her was off the table. Maybe Clint should stay. Nat’s track record of trusting women was a very narrow window. Save them. She’d do that every day of the week, but she’d been raised to watch her back against the other girls and maybe that had left a deeper mark than she realized.

Look at her, she was learning all kinds of interesting shit.

“Nat…”

She blinked. The world had faded out around her, but Clint frowned at her.

“Okay, new rules,” he said. “You can’t check out right now. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” she told him. Stripping off her robe, she turned her back and reached for the shirt to strip over her head.

“Jesus, Red. Give a guy some warning.” Tony made a noise and she ignored them all. It was a body and at this point every single person here except for maybe Helen had seen her naked at some point. Her stomach curdled as she dragged the thin green gown on, and even though the lighting here wasn’t glaring, it still seemed too bright and sallowed out her skin.

Or maybe that was just the mottle of bruises. There were more than a few on her arms. Huh. She’d barely taken stock in the shower. Her damp hair was drying up curly, but at least it was clean. She got the gown on, and then slid the panties off and folded everything together in a bundle. The socks stayed. The damn floor was cold even through them.

Facing the doc, she said, “What next?”

Next was…tests. Blood work. Blood panels. An ultrasound. An MRI. A full body CT scan. X-rays. Spinal tap. Neurological scan. An internal. That was a treat.

All. The. Tests.

She made it through every single one without throwing up.

Or killing the doc.

Even the internal, which she sent the guys out of the room during even Clint because there was vulnerable and then there was on display.

She’d had enough of all of them.

They’d left this test for last. Nat lay flat on the back, staring up at the ceiling. Her feet in the stirrups, legs spread and her hands gripping the table to keep from striking out.

“Almost done,” Helen told her. “I’m sorry this has to be so invasive.” Despite all that deep scientific curiosity and glee—yes there had been excitement in her eyes when Natasha listed off what she needed to know—Helen had kept it professional and sobered with every single test.

“Well, you wanted to answer all the questions…” That was what this would do right. Tell them what the hell was going on. Though what she’d find _forty_ years later, Nat had no idea.

But she had to do something.

BARF.

The guys were watching too closely. She needed to put a plan together. Outside the frosted glass windows they were all waiting. For the first time since James told her, she felt like she could breathe. The weight of his regard had been almost as painful as the tale he’d told. He remembered—everything. He remembered her as she’d been. He remembered the woman she barely knew. What the hell did he see when he looked at her now?

Did she really want to answer all of these questions?

The pressure increased, and there was more than just _some_ discomfort.

“You have—a tremendous amount of scarring,” Helen told her. Her tone was perfunctory. Professional. She wasn’t trying to be her friend or bleeding with sympathy. She nodded her head to the screen. “The uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries are still there—but you said they did a surgery…”

“Doc, I remember going to the medical ward for a procedure. They sent me there a lot for different things. Infusions. Setting broken bones. Breaking my bones to see how long they would take to heal. Procedures were just—a way of life.” She touched her tongue to her teeth and focused on a roof tile and the little pitted depressions in it. There was more pressure and she had to keep her legs steady or she was going to kick the doc right in the face.

“But you said they made an incision, where precisely?”

It was sixty-eight years before… she drew a line down the left side lateral to her abdomen. “Maybe six or eight inches…”

“And you said it took a couple of days to heal?”

A single nod.

Helen finally removed her hand, and Nat blew out a breath. “You can lower your legs.”

She didn’t have to tell her twice, Nat pushed up and then grimaced as everything along her back tried to seize.

“Easy,” Helen said. She’d snapped off her gloves and then helped her sit up. It took discipline to not yank away from her. “Your blood pressure is elevated—which is a first and you’re definitely in more pain than you’re admitting to.”

“Doc, I’m always in pain.” She shrugged. “You get used to it…so the scarring?”

Helen took a step back and retrieved a StarkPad. “Do you want them in here for this?”

James and Steve could likely hear her just fine… Game face on. “Friday, can you ask the guys to come in?”

The question wasn’t even finished when the door opened. James had to have been standing right on the door. He swept a look over her and she gave him a small smile. Steve was a half step behind him, and his visual sweep mirrored James so tightly she almost laughed.

Almost.

They really were a lot alike in some ways.

Clint and Tony were last, and Tony had a StarkPad of his own in hand. Probably already reviewing her test results.

Privacy used to be a thing.

She and Tony were going to be having a very, very long discussion soon.

Bracketed by Steve and James, she looked at Helen. “So, what do we know?”

“Since you unlocked your records for me—thank you for that—what I have is all preliminary. I will need to review everything else we’ve gathered today, compare blood panels, and…”

“Doc, I get it.” Nat cut her off. “What do we _know_?”

“Right…” Helen squared her shoulders, then tapped something on the StarkPad and a holo screen came up. “These three screens here are your previous blood work panels. Dr. Banner noted here the gamma exposure on your DNA, but he had no explanation for it and he added the amendment that you were refusing to cooperate with any other tests.”

Well, that much was true.

“However, he did do a DNA strand test and filed it for later. That strand is here…” She enhanced it. “This was taken in 2013, about seven months after the Battle of New York.”

After New York Before D.C.

“I got shot.” Nat said. “I’d been on an undercover op, and he was the closest doc I knew so I asked him to get the bullet out.”

He’d swabbed the wound and he’d taken a single blood test to run for infections. Nice job Bruce, apparently he ran it for more. No wonder he wanted to do a follow up.

Steve glared at her.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I didn’t report it. I was fine, it was a single bullet. Yell at me later.”

Then she looked back at the doc.

“This sample is after the events in D.C. The doctor took it when he was treating you for a gunshot wound to the shoulder.”

James twitched.

“The blood work was submitted and compartmentalized under an Avengers protocol Mr. Stark had running.”

“You’re welcome,” Tony said without an ounce of sarcasm.

“Same abnormalities appear here, and here.” She highlighted the chain. “Assuming you understand that standard human DNA is formed in a double helix pattern.” Thankfully she didn’t wait for the class to acknowledge before continuing. “Almost universally, your double helix has some interesting divergences from standard and the theory that Mr. Stark seems to share are that these…” She highlighted and enlarged. There were red specs all over the ladder structure, strung together in a very clear pattern… “This would be the serum you were given. Now the serum in Captain Rogers’ blood is bonded to each ladder of his DNA.”

Another image flicked on the screen and it didn’t look strange at all, the standard helix pattern until she enlarged it. The strands were thicker, reinforced. “This is where it bonded. Yours…” She switched the screen back. “It’s reshaped and reinforced, and altered the structure but it’s utterly unique.”

“Doc…no offense,” Clint interceded. “We’re not here for molecular biology lessons.”

“No, but you want me to explain if its possible that a woman who was sterilized by unknown methods in the 40s could possibly get pregnant and give birth in the 70s some forty years after the fact when her blood chemistry and DNA have undergone radical transformations and I’m not sure in what order it happened _except_ that the gamma exposure most likely occurred in 2012, so we can eliminate that as any kind of causal factor.”

“You make it sound like it’s tough,” Natasha said, drawing the doctor’s consternated frown. “Are you the world-renowned geneticist and leading authority on genetic manipulation or not?”

The challenge irked the woman and her chin came up. “More than anyone else in this room, I understand what they did to you and I only understand it on the most base level. I don’t think they intended this—no one could _ever_ have intended _this_.”

“You are thinking too highly of the people who did it.”

Natasha would never make that mistake.

“Am I wrong in assuming the base Erskine formula is what was perfected for Captain Rogers?” She glanced between she, James and Steve.

“No, you’re not wrong,” James said in a cool tone. “Natalia and I are the cheap knockoffs of the name brand. What’s your _point?_ ”

Natasha reached over and caught his metal hand in hers and slid her fingers through his. The tension in him lessened. Steve had a hand on his shoulder, too. Bracing him. None of them were alone in this.

“The point is…” Helen swiped something across the StarkPad and flipped it onto the holo screen. “Your DNA is adaptable. Introduce something new to it, and it will utilize the resources. Repurpose them.” She switched screens. “You have heavy scarring throughout your uterus and fallopian tubes, but your ovaries are intact. The scarring here and here…this is scar tissue reattaching the fallopian tubes. It shouldn't exist, but there it is.” She highlighted areas. “Gynecology isn’t my specialty, but the striations in the tissue is heavy layers of scar tissue overlying old wounds. Based on the way you heal, the only way they got this much damage is if they began inflicting before, during, and after whatever treatments they were giving you.”

Tony blanched and a muscle ticked in Clint’s jaw. James’ fingers flexed around hers, but it was Steve’s low, raw voice, “Bastards,” that broke the silence.

Damage.

Very polite way of putting it.

“All of this damage tells me it’s not a case that you _can’t_ get pregnant. It’s that you wouldn’t be able to _sustain_ the pregnancy.”

“But she did,” James said with a perfect core of steel in the syllables. “I was there when the baby was born, and she was perfect. Natalia had…trouble after…passing the placenta.”

Tony looked elsewhere and shook his head for a moment before focusing on them. Clint grimaced, but held his ground and Steve’s hand slipped onto her shoulder. A grounding force, reminding her he was there.

“I believe it,” Helen said, then lowered the pad and leaned back. “I have a feeling it has more to do with your DNA than hers at that point, but—it would have had to have made the environment less hostile and there are a thousand other factors to consider, not the least of which—it was a one in a million chance, and you got the lucky lottery card.”

So.

Possible.

There was absolutely no comfort in that.

“Can you figure out if my blood is useful against CQ-A?” The question gave Helen a start, then Tony frowned and Clint stared at her. She shrugged. “We can do something about that.” She gave James’ hand a squeeze, then eased off the bed aware of everyone watching her as she gathered her clothes. “Not sure what to do about the rest…yet.”

Not until she knew what happened to her and the only person hiding that secret…

…was her.

“Natasha…” Helen stopped her, and she turned her head slightly, but she didn’t look at any of them. “I’d need to monitor it, and if we had earlier scans that would help, but since we don’t—I’m guessing here just based on what I see…it’s entirely possible that you can heal this damage.”

She turned slowly. “What?”

“You heal at an alarming rate, but based on everything I know about you—you get hurt at the same rate. Your body heals at the rate of most life threatening to least…it’s possible this has never healed fully because you have constantly been in a state of trauma or it did…and they repeatedly inflicted the damage.”

“I haven’t been where they could do this in thirty years, still think that’s the case?”

“Not true,” James answered before the doc could and he eyed her. “You were at SHIELD.”

Something metal gave and bending and snapping with brutal force. Nat jerked her head to look at where Steve had pulled the metal bar clean off the bed.

“Yeah…” she said slowly meeting his tortured gaze. “Guess I was…so I’m looking at two years in the clear. Yay me.”

With that, she turned and made her way toward the bathroom. Every step sent an ache jolting through her back. The hollow feeling inside, like someone had quite literally scraped out everything that made her her, and left the shell behind seemed to track right along with her.

Once in the bathroom she stared at the three empty stalls and the row of sinks. A chair and a love seat sat on some nice carpet near the entrance, a sitting room for a restroom outfitted with luxury items like every other Stark facility she’d ever been inside. Why not make the functional beautiful and elegant while you were at it?

A little laugh bubbled out of her and she clapped a hand over her mouth before it turned into a scream. Dropping her clothes in the chair, she sank down on the settee.

Her abdomen hurt. Her back hurt. Her soul hurt.

Pain could be overcome.

Or forgotten.

Apparently it could just be erased like it was never there. Could you really hurt and miss what you never knew you had?

James knew. He had memories. He could tell her exactly what the baby looked like, how she smelled—how she felt in his arms.

She had...

The door opened and Clint leaned inside, then he glanced over his shoulder before easing into the room and closing the door behind him. With slow, but steady steps, he crossed over to sit down on the settee next to her. He didn’t talk, just sat there, silent in his solidarity.

The silence stretched out. No one else came in. Clint didn’t try to take her hand or put an arm around her. He didn’t touch her at all. He just sat there, and another one of those wet laughs bubbled up inside of her.

“Change the chairs out for a hard bench, and we could be back in my cell at SHIELD.”

“Smells better in here,” Clint mused. “And you only had one toilet. Who needs three?”

“Maybe my ass is delicate and doesn’t want to touch the same porcelain three times a day.”

He snorted. “Needs a shower.”

“I had one, thank you.” She lifted an arm and sniffed. “Smell like that stupid ultrasound gel.”

“Did she at least warm it up?”

“Sure…and she warmed up the speculum too. She’s a regular hero.”

“Huh,” Clint said slowly. “Do you think it makes a difference?”

She glanced at him, and he crossed his eyes and it pulled another wet laugh out of her, then another and then the tears started slipping down her cheeks and she shoved her palms against her eyes to force them back. She was not going to fucking cry.

Clint didn’t move. Didn’t say a word as she swallowed the hard lump in her throat. The spike in the back of her head dug in a little deeper.

Finally, she blew out a shaky breath. Her eyes were dry and her cheeks damp, but it would evaporate. “I need something.”

“Name it.”

“I need to use Tony’s BARF technology again.”

A whuff of air escaped Clint. “They aren’t going to go for it.”

“I don’t care. I had…have…there’s a kid out there and I’m the only one who knows where she went. James got his memories of her—and Helen just said it was physically possible. BARF works.”

“It also put you into a coma.” No judgment. Just facts.

“I don’t care,” she repeated the phrase. It had no weight, no meaning. “Clint I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“I know kid,” he murmured, and slid an arm around her. The burn in her eyes resurfaced with a vengeance, but she locked it down. Fuck her amygdala. She had this. She could endure torture.

This would not break her.

“He told me…he said I came back for him. I let them find me. A year later. A year. That would mean either something happened to her in that year or I found a way to hide her.”

“And he broke your arms and your legs to take you back…and he put you in the chair.” Clint knew the whole story. Good. James had talked to him.

“You need to keep talking to him…and to Steve. They’re going to need someone sane to keep them even.”

“That would be your job,” Clint pointed out.

“Not remotely qualified at the moment…” She twisted her lips. “I’ve been compromised in every possible way on this one.”

“And you think I’m not?” The bluntness of it coupled with the absence of sarcasm made his point for him. “In the interests of total transparency, let me assure you—I am one thousand percent compromised.”

“I would take care of Laura for you.”

“Fuck you, Nat.” But there was no heat and he sighed. “Fine, not like I wasn’t going to keep an eye on them anyway. Or that they can’t hear every word of this conversation if they want to.”

“Super soldier hearing sucks,” she said agreeably. “Saves time though. Don’t have to explain it.”

“Always looking for the upside, yeah?” He squeezed her shoulders gently and she took the hint and leaned against him, eyes closed.

“Have to…” After another hard swallow, she asked, “Will you help me?”

“Not even a question, kid. I’ll talk to Stark.”

Tony wasn’t going to like it.

Nor would Steve or James.

Hell, Clint didn’t like it.

“It’s weird…”

“What?”

“I forgot I had a kid.” Even the words tasted foreign in her mouth. “But I know why I forgot…”

“Why you chose to go back?”

A little nod. “Yep.”

“Because they would have kept coming for you.”

Another nod. “They had James. Knowing even what I know now…they wanted me back, they would have kept sending him. The only way to protect her was to go back and force them to make me forget.”

The only possible way she could have survived that separation.

Make it so it never happened.

“So what would you have done before then?”

“Put her somewhere untouchable…somewhere they’d never link her to me with people who could protect her.” Someone dangerous, and someone connected. Someone who had the resources and the skills to make sure she had a life untainted by being the daughter of the Black Widow. “I had a year. You can do a lot in a year.”

The first step would have been to put distance between her and Montana. Then…what? Where?

So many possibilities. Too many.

“You can do a lot in a day, you had a plan, that much I know. The question is did they derail the plan when they put you in the chair?” His jaw tightened on the last word. “Or was that what you intended?”

“They would have put me in the chair regardless. No question. I had to know that was a certainty. Karpov—the chair never worked on me long term. Until now…”

Why would it work on this one thing?

“Barnes,” Clint answered. “You and Barnes pulled each other out, he was already wiped—he couldn’t pull you out of that one. But apparently you two found each other again, did he tell you that?”

No, but she’d already guessed it. They hadn’t really gotten that far, or if he had, she’d checked out after he’d described the events on the Amalfi Coast. “It’s why I left eventually, they took him away again…”

But why did she never go back? Was that Ivan’s trigger? Or had she known it was useless by then? They were trapped in a never ending hellish loop, destined to repeat the same pain again and again until what? It finally killed them.

“I love you kid,” Clint told her. “You know that right?”

“Yeah,” she said with a faint smile. “You’re kind of an idiot.”

“Kind of? Damn, I graduated up a step.” A smile in the words and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“I have to go back out there, and we have so much work to do…”

“You can take every fucking minute you need to take and if it’s days, then it’s days. The rest of the world will take care of itself, we’ll make sure of it.”

Except that it wouldn’t. The team knew she was here and they had to be dealt with and faced. If it meant taking her licks, she’d take them. If it meant she had to go, and reorganize somewhere else, then that would happen, too.

There was the missing CQ, and the job Talbot had given Tony. That stuff could _not_ stay in the open. She might be pretty useful bringing it in.

After all, the only thing that might matter more than the mission was…

“Tasha…the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. It doesn’t rest on any one of our shoulders—we do this together. All of us. We protect Tony. We keep Barnes safe and in the clear. We get Wanda and Sam home. We keep Steve from barreling headfirst into a viper’s pit of danger to save the rest of us. We do it the way we do everything…together.”

“What do we keep Rhodey from doing?” She rubbed her lip against her teeth, the hint of sharpness buying her a little clarity.

“We handle him with care right now cause the colonel’s good and pissed at everyone. Maybe we let him vent a little before we try to disarm that particular bomb.”

She smiled. “I like Rhodey.”

“Yeah, he’s not so bad.”

“No, he’s not. He’s put up with a lot the last few years…”

He fell from the sky and he didn’t have a serum to save him or a Steve to catch him.

“One step a time, yeah?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

A quiet knock on the door, and then Steve pushed it inward and looked at them.

“And that’s my cue,” Clint said, giving her a little squeeze before he used his cane to balance himself with as he stood. “She’s all yours, Cap…handle with extreme care.”

Steve held the door for him, then carried over a smaller bundle of clothes. “I went upstairs to get you something else to wear…figured you might not want to just be in a robe.” He placed the yoga pants, tank top, and hoodie on her lap before he sat down slowly in the space Clint left.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he told her. “Every time.”

“Kind of missing Canada aren’t we?” Three days? Four days? Everything bled together.

“Little bit, but you know…one thing I’ve learned since waking up here…not all adventure is fun, but it’s also not a bad thing. The hits…they keep coming and we keep getting up. Only we’re not getting up on our own…I’m there to catch you, and you’re there to watch my back…Bucky’s back to bully us both…future’s got perks.”

She ran her fingers over the soft cloth of the leggings. Self-soothing gestures didn’t always work on her, but why not?

“Where’s James?”

“Sitting outside, waiting for you to look at him.” There was no reproach in his voice.

“None of this is his fault,” she said, dragging her gaze up to meet his.

“No, Angel. It’s not your fault either. You two didn’t do a damn thing wrong. I wish like hell I’d been there…that I could have stopped this from happening to either of you.” The fierceness in his eyes made an oath out of those words. “I can’t change that, but I can be here now. Whatever you need. Whatever he needs. We get through this…”

Partners.

She had to get it together. They needed her and she couldn’t keep—wallowing in this hole of despair. Those years were gone and she was never getting them back… The past was done. She couldn’t change it. The future was never a guarantee. She had today.

Only today.

_We have what we have…when we have it._

Pulling the tie on the hospital gown, she shifted and then stood. Steve moved to help her. Wordlessly pulling the gown away and then she tugged the tank top on. He pulled out a clean pair of panties, and held them as she stepped into them. The twinge her back was becoming a familiar companion but it had nothing on the hole in her heart currently.

Once he pulled up her pants, he rested his hands on her hips. “Can I give you a hug?”

Fuck, he had to ask? She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes. For a minute, she rested her head against his chest and let him close out everything has her folded her in tight. No squeezing, no force, just Steve like one big shield around her.

_We have what we have when we have it._

She let herself linger there for a minute. Sixty seconds. That was all. No more wallowing. James needed her. Steve needed.

She needed her.

Then she eased back. Steve let her go, then held up the hoodie so she could slide her arms into it. Exhaustion shrouded her, but they still had a lot to do. He grabbed the last of her things, then lead her to the door. Outside, James pushed up and straightened to face her and she walked right into his arms and pressed her forehead to his shoulder as he locked her in his embrace.

_We have…what we have…_

_Fuck it._

“I want her back,” she said against his chest. “I don’t care what it costs me, I want those memories back and I want to find her.”

There was silence, and then Steve was at her back and she was buffeted between them. “Then we find her.”

“We’ll find her, doll,” James said, his whisper a prayer against her ear. “We’ll make it happen.”

Resolve stiffened her spine. They were the impossible, right?

The one thing that might matter more than the mission…

Damn right it mattered.


	47. Showtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few reunions, breakfast, some bickering, and a long overdo rant...

**Chapter Forty-Seven**

**Showtime**

**Steve**

 

 

 

The stack of pancakes grew as he added more batter to the griddle. He’d pretty much fried all the bacon up, and there was a bowl of whisked eggs ready for omelets. But the act of fixing the pancakes soothed, so he kept flipping them. Chances were they would have company for breakfast that morning. Sam had already texted and Friday had submitted a gentle inquiry from Wanda. It wouldn’t surprise him if Stark put on an appearance.

Steve blew out a slow breath. No fighting with Tony. All Nat asked was they not fight. So, no fighting. He took another breath, then flipped the pancakes. A shuffle drag step—he turned partially and caught sight of Bucky closing the door to Nat’s room with care before walking over. Hair rumpled from sleep, the bruises under his eyes decried he’d gotten and rubbing the back of his neck, Bucky looked like crap.

“Coffee.” Steve said, motioning to the pot. “Triple brewed. Finished a minute ago.” Nat could barely stomach it, but Steve had another pot ready to go for her when she started moving. This was for he and Buck, and he thought they’d need all the help they could. “She still asleep?”

“Yeah, I think she went deep finally, no more twitching awake.” The comment earned an equally grim look. “I don’t want to even imagine what her nightmares are doing.”

Nor did Steve. He’d given up on sleep the second time she’d snapped her eyes open and sat straight up. She didn’t whimper or cry or betray any sounds, just a stressed crease of her brow and then the jerk. They’d taken turns on watch, soothing away the lines the moment they appeared, holding her without trapping her. It took some juggling.

Bucky put a second plate next to Steve’s before he filled two oversized mugs with the coffee that would give tar a run for its money in darkness and consistency. The bitter smell was actually some comfort. Bucky downed half the cup with a grimace. “This shouldn’t taste so good.”

“It’s not about taste at this point,” Steve told him as he started stacking pancakes onto Buck’s plate, then motioned to the bacon. “I have stuff for omelets if you want.”

Bucky eyed the plate, then the stacks keeping warm on the back of the stove. “We feeding a whole unit this morning?”

Steve checked his watch. “Sam went for a run, he’ll be back in about twenty minutes, shower and probably here about fifteen after that. Wanda is up, she’s meditating and doing some yoga. Asked if she could come by—I figure she’ll be here right after or just before. Tony…”

“Probably hasn’t slept and will have some tech solution for us when he shows up wild eyed and over stimulated,” Bucky said drily, then shook his head. “You should have Friday let him know when it’s safe to come down so he doesn’t have to eavesdrop to figure it out.”

His phone buzzed before Steve could comment, and he reached over to retrieve it from the counter. A message from Friday—the muscles in his back went taut, but Steve forced himself to breathe through it before swiping the screen open—not for Tony but for Peter. Kid had come by after school the day before but they’d sent him to Tony. Nat had been awake and was doing better, they’d told him—lied to him really, but neither he nor Bucky wanted to see her pull on a mask for the kid. She had to have the time to grieve even if she wouldn’t give it to herself.

“Peter’s in the lobby.”

Bucky laughed, it was a mirthless sound. “It’s the weekend. Spider-Punk doesn’t have school.”

“Grab another plate,” Steve told him, then said, “Friday, tell Peter he can come up, but Nat’s still asleep so let’s keep it quiet.”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.” Friday had been exceptionally cooperative. Even on voice activated mode, unless he specifically made a request, she wasn’t even chiming in to ask—she sent text messages. Maybe Tony had gotten it through his head.

He paused and braced his hands on the counter, head bowed and he counted.

“Breathe, Punk,” Bucky told him. “Stark cares. We knew that…”

“He was spying on her—and us.”

“He was watching her back. Do I like it? No. Do I appreciate that he wants to protect her? Hard not to.” It was reasonable as hell, but Steve shook his head.

“He had no right,” was all Steve would say. “Not going to get over that anytime soon.”

“You have to,” Bucky told him with a clasp of his shoulder before he grabbed his plate and cup and moved to the table.

“He…”

“Is half in love with her,” Bucky told him and the revelation glued Steve’s feet to the floor. “And the guy isn’t fighting us for her, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t fighting _for_ her. It’ll work out, Stevie—but you put Natalia in a corner and she will come out fighting.”

He wasn’t… “I’m not.”

“Not yet. Keep winding yourself up though and you’re going to. Guy knows what he did—he wasn’t even defending himself yesterday.”

No, he hadn’t. Not once had he offered up an excuse. He’d apologized, and he’d faced Steve’s temper head on without shying away from it or trying to deflect. When Nat asked him to stop to not fight…Steve couldn’t put her in the middle again. He saw the same thing in Tony’s eyes. Bucky wasn’t wrong.

“How the hell are you so reasonable?” He and Bucky really _hadn’t_ had time to just talk, the two of them. Not when Nat was—fuck, Steve never wanted to see that lost look in her eyes again. He’d seen her beaten, shot, tortured, and trapped—and he’d _never_ seen that look on her face before. “This…this happened to you, too?”

They didn’t have long; the elevators weren’t slow.

Bucky settled at the table, and said, “Because I did have a few days to wrestle with it, to look at every choice I’d made. To try and make sense of the senseless. My past ain’t pretty Punk. In the grand scale balancing who is worthy? I pretty much can’t even reach the table…but I did one or two good things in all of that—and she’s the best of it. The one bright fucking shining light…and she rose no matter how much shit they scraped on to her. I can remember the way she smiled the first time she had a picture taken of us—we didn’t have those kinds of mementos. We didn’t go on dates or out dancing. We had the shadowy corners and stolen moments—then we had almost two years, two years of just being us.” His expression went wistful. “Before there was a me, there was us…and I started to remember—you, me…Brooklyn. All of it. It came back in pieces, and she was right there, beautiful and fierce and so fucking brave she makes my heart hurt. Being pregnant and alone with a guy who was barely human on his best days, but that she cared about too much to leave behind? They prepared her for everything, but who can prepare for that?”

Steve’s heart fisted so tight it made breathing almost impossible. Not even the bruising he’d taken catching her—fuck, seeing her fall had made his heart stop, he’d never run so fast in his life—it couldn’t match this.

“But she never stopped planning, adapting, and she held my hand and told me it would be okay…” Bucky shook his head, then swiped a hand over his eyes before he took a drink of the coffee. He sniffed as the elevator chimed to warn them Peter was there. “I can remember all of her—she can’t. So right now…I can be whatever she needs from me whenever she needs me to be it.”

Then his gaze moved past Steve and a faint, if polite smile creased his lips. “Parker…”

“Hey…” The kid had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and a set of headphones hanging around his neck. His clothes were rumpled, and his hair a little damp. “Sorry to come by so early…”

“It’s fine,” Steve said, finding his voice after he cleared his throat. “There’s plenty of food—Nat says you can eat.”

A shy grin graced the kid’s face, and he ducked his chin. “I’m…woah…are those pancakes?” He stared across at the stove and Steve chuckled.

“Yep, bacon, too.” He stacked a half dozen onto a plate and then moved one of the trays of bacon over to the table. “You drink coffee?”

“Sometimes, but usually only the stuff from Starbucks,” Peter admitted as he let his backpack slide down before taking the plate.

“So no, you drink coffee flavored dessert milk,” Bucky commented with such mild disgust, he earned a smirk.

“Depends, I like the peppermint ones though.”

Steve laughed, the chuckle was rusty but it felt good. “The peppermint ones aren’t bad, I like the salted caramel, but I’m with Buck—it’s not coffee.”

Peter shrugged. “It’s caffeine and sugar, and tasty. Do you have any soda? Or water, water’s fine. I’m not picky.”

He dropped into a chair and loaded the pancakes up with enough butter to soften a baked potato and then added even more syrup. Bucky stole a slice of the bacon and watched the kid with bemusement.

“Orange juice?” Steve offered.

“That’d be great,” Peter gave him a flash of a grin, then started cutting into the pancakes. After pouring a couple of glasses, Steve carried the pitcher and the glasses over before grabbing his own plate.

“So the kid gets served at the table, but I gotta get my own?” Bucky commented, a glint in his eyes. “I see how it is.”

Steve rolled his eyes and sat down. “Peter’s a guest. You don’t count.”

Not quite snickering, Peter kept eating at a pace that had to be what Steve looked like when he was famished. No wonder Nat had been amused. They were quiet as he dug into his own, and Bucky finished his stack and went back for a second.

Finally, Peter asked, “Is she really okay? Mr. Stark said she was exhausted but awake yesterday, and that we should let her rest.”

“She’s—healing. Might take a couple of days. So just be patient with her.” There would be no training if he could help it, but Bucky was right—Nat would do what Nat wanted.

Peter exhaled a long sigh, then nodded. “I didn’t know she got shot in the back…I was swinging her around and…”

“You didn’t hurt her, kid,” Bucky told him. “The damage was done before, you were helping her. You got her away from the explosions.”

“Well—Wanda did that,” Peter said, ducking his head. “I just—I wanted to get her off that roof. Shouldn’t have left her on the street in the first place.”

“Hey,” Steve said, pausing mid cut of the pancakes. “What did Nat tell you to do?”

“To get the bags inside and secured in Mr. Stark’s lab. But…”

“No buts,” Bucky said. “She gave you an order.”

“You followed it,” Steve tacked on. “Lots of times, we don’t know what’s coming around the next corner, but we do know who has our back. If you’d argued with her...”

Picking up the thread, Bucky pointed a fork at him. “Could have made things worse. But you did what you were told, and then you went back out here—suited up and in a better position to help than kid on the street.”

“Being part of a team means trusting your team,” Steve finished. “You trusted her—and she trusted you. That’s something, don’t diminish it.”

The kid’s gaze went back and forth between them, and he nodded slowly. “I get that…but it still kind of feels like my fault.”

“It always will,” Steve confessed. “Feels like mine. I was right next to her when she was shot.” He slid a glance at Bucky.

His best friend sighed, and bumped his fist against Steve’s shoulder. Bucky had blamed him, and Steve didn’t disagree but there was forgiveness in that glance. “Feels like mine because I wasn’t here…I bet you ask Stark, the witch girl and Sam—and they’ll all say the same things. It hurts when someone on the team goes down. The important part is she made it and that wouldn’t have happened without all of you out there. They had a hard snare in place…”

He’d blamed Bucky for that—for taking off. Never in a million years could he have imagined the _why_ and knowing it, he couldn’t argue he wouldn’t have done the same thing. There was no way to take the story to Nat without some kind of proof to back it up for himself even if not for her. “Teams…teams rise and fall based on whether they can trust each other to do their part. But even when we do everything right…people get hurt.”

The kid chewed his lip, then reached for orange juice glass. “I don’t like that—Natasha told me that sometimes you have to make choices where someone ends up hurt…and that you have to live with the choice.”

“It’s called a sacrifice play,” Bucky explained to him. “We try to avoid those, but—you can’t always.”

“I don’t believe that,” Peter said, his frown deep. “I’m Spider-Man, I can do things no one else can. He’s Captain America—you’re—you’re the guy with a metal arm. I’ve seen you both fight…we should be able to do it. Mr. Stark saved those people on the ferry…”

“Sacrifice plays aren’t something you wake up in the morning and say you plan to do,” Bucky told him, his tone even and his expression almost kind. “But it is the thing you know you’re willing to do. Your life or someone else’s? Your life or innocents? The life of one person versus a hundred? Sometimes the math—there’s no math that changes that outcome.”

“But there are always variables,” Peter insisted. “Variables you can’t account for. Being willing to sacrifice anyone says you’ve lost before you even started fighting.”

Steve chuckled.

“I mean—no disrespect Captain…” Peter cut a look to him and Steve shook his head.

“You’re not disrespecting anyone, Peter.” He pushed back from the table and nodded to his plate. “You still hungry?”

A guilty flush filled his face and Steve took the plate before Peter could protest.

“Don’t worry, I made plenty and I can make more.” He reloaded the plates, then jerked his chin at Bucky. “You want more or you good for five minutes?”

Bucky smirked and leaned back in his chair. “I can wait for the next batch.”

Peter snickered as he snagged a piece of bacon. “I guess you have high metabolisms, too?”

“Pretty much,” Steve said as he slid the plate in front of him. “Makes getting full hard, getting drunk impossible—but the trade off means I can help people.”

“So I guess that’s kind of a sacrifice?” Peter asked as he poured the syrup.

“If drinking were the thing you really wanted, sure. It’s just—is. Look,” Bucky said, swallowing another mouthful of coffee before continuing. “Are you going to train and learn how to master what you can do so you’re faster, and the best you can be when you’re out there?”

“I want to,” Peter said earnestly. “We haven’t had that many sessions, but…I feel like I’m learning a lot.”

“Well, learning in a training room is one thing, putting that to work in the field is another. You do your best, you train like hell, and maybe you don’t ever have to make that call—” He locked gazes with the kid and Peter hesitated, fork in mid-rise to his mouth. “But, this is the part you _have_ to accept. If the time comes, you can’t freeze. You have to be willing to make the call if there is no other choice. Exhaust all your options, but if you freeze— _everyone_ loses.”

“Oh.” The fork lowered.

“It’s why I put the plane in the ice,” Steve told him. “I didn’t want to die, I didn’t…I didn’t want to not come back. Maybe I could have pointed the plane that way and jumped, but—Schmidt had all these computers and auto things running, didn’t know if it would be enough. I had to make sure that those bombs never made it to New York. But my choice didn’t just hurt me…at the time, didn’t really hurt me at all.” The plane had hit, the water rose, and even the flicker of panic he experienced extinguished as the wet darkness swallowed him. “Sometimes you don’t have time to think it all the way through—so just know what you’re willing to do.”

“Okay,” Peter said, then took a bite and chewed it thoughtfully.

Bucky caught Steve’s eye and raised a brow. Steve shook his head. No, he really didn’t want to get into his time in the ice. Or the moments when he woke, aware for a seconds-long’s eternity of how cold and alone he was before the darkness took him again.

“What’s in the bag?” Bucky asked, motioning to the backpack.

“My suit—and my—homework.” His ears reddened and Steve grinned. He liked the kid, there was just no artifice about him.

“What are they doing for homework these days? Been a rough minute since the last time either of us were in school.”

School. College. Steve finished his stack of pancakes then headed back to the stove to cook up some more. Sam was due any minute. His phone buzzed and there was a note from Clint. _Lemme know when she’s awake. I briefed Laura._

Setting the batter down, he sent back, _She’s not going to be happy with you._ Nat didn’t want Laura to know, she wanted to protect her—but Nat missed Clint’s kids, and after what she learned…he couldn’t say he disagreed with Clint’s assessment. Nat needed to be reminded she wasn’t alone on any front.

 **Clint:** _She can suck it up. Did she sleep?_

 **Steve:** _Not as much as I’d like. Nightmares. Still sleeping now._

 **Clint:** _Figured. How are you?_

 **Steve:** _It’s not about me._

 **Clint:** _You care. So yes it is. Don’t be dense. How are you?_

Steve considered his answer for a beat and glanced over at the table where Peter was showing a book to Bucky. He’d heard her ask Clint to look after them. Heard why she needed it. So he couldn’t make light of it, even if he wished she wouldn’t worry about him at all right now. He’d survive.

 **Steve** _: Worried. Angry. Hurting for them. But—okay. She needs me to be okay._

 **Clint:** _She needs you to be honest, too. Face the bad shit, Cap. It sucks, but if you don’t, it will ambush you take others out at the same time._

 **Steve:** _Speaking from experience?_

 **Clint:** _Unfortunately._

Made sense, even if he still wasn’t comfortable with making any of this situation about him.

 **Steve** : _Making more pancakes. Have stuff for omelets. Peter’s here. Come up if you’re hungry._

 **Clint:** _PT, then I’ll be there. I’m in trouble with the BattleAxe_

Steve didn’t laugh.

 **Steve** : _I’ll save you some. Go easy on the BattleAxe, she means well._

 **Clint:** _She means to punish me, but I’m asking for it. Later._

 

Setting the phone aside, he resumed pouring batter onto the now reheated griddle. At the table, Peter had handed another pair of books to Bucky.

“… _Things Fall Apart_ by Chinua Achebe, it’s about how British Colonialism and Christianity affected a Nigerian man.”

“And you have to read one of these or all of them?” Bucky sounded bemused, but Steve knew better. Once upon a time, if there was a book available, Bucky would be reading it. He pretty much loved everything, but especially the speculative fiction pieces.

“All of them, I mean—I could do one, but you get extra credit if you do all three,” Peter had finished his second stack of pancakes and was no working his way through the bacon. Bucky carried one of the books with him along with his coffee mug.

“Dostoyevsky is heavy reading,” Bucky said. “Not a fan myself.”

“But he’s Russian, right?” Peter said, leaning forward.

Steve glanced over his shoulder.

“Yeah, he’s Russian, writes like a Russian too.” Bucky washed out the empty carafe and got another pot of coffee brewing. “But he does make some points if you can slog all the way through it.”

The phone buzzed—Friday telling Steve Sam was on his way up.

“Sam’s coming,” Steve said. “Hit the other pot to turn it on.”

Bucky made a face, but complied then returned the book to Peter before looking at the last one.

“That’s Ceremony—it’s about a Native American who comes back from World War II with PTSD and he loses touch with his own spirituality, becomes an alcoholic, but eventually gets dry and finds his spirituality again and begins to heal…”

The elevator dinged and Sam entered with an easy smile on his face. After a quick sweep of the room, he said, “Morning,” but kept his voice pitched comfortably low. Steve had warned him earlier Nat was asleep and he wanted her to sleep for as long as possible. Dressed in slacks and a polo, Sam looked ready to head into the VA but Steve didn’t think he had work that day.

“Hey,” Peter said, twisting in the seat. “You’re the Falcon guy.”

Sam slowed a step with a frown. Had Sam and Peter not met yet?

“Peter Parker—Sam Wilson,” Steve said. “Peter’s…”

“The Spider-Punk who kicked our asses,” Bucky finished and Peter actually grimaced and gave him a chagrinned look. “Own it kid. You kicked our asses. More his than mine, but you handled yourself well…”

“Until Redwing took him out,” Sam grumbled and gave Bucky a pointed look before offering his hand to Peter. The kid scrambled to wipe his hands on a napkin before shaking it. “Nice to meet you, Peter…you do know you’re a little young to be hanging out around this crowd.”

“Yeah, but they’re okay for a couple of old guys.” The hint of sheepish grin coupled with good, honest teasing made Steve chuckle as he shook his head.

Sam clapped Peter on the shoulder. “Okay, I like him. We’re keeping him right?”

“Just remember, that old guy over there is fixing you breakfast and this old guy can answer your Russian lit questions.” Bucky repoured the coffee through to run it again, then motioned Sam to the other pot. “Coffee. Pancakes. Bacon.”

“Three words, you actually spoke three civil words to me.” Sam clutched at his chest. “You heard him, right kid?”

Peter shot a bewildered look to Steve. “Uh…he says lots of civil words. We were just talking about my AP lit assignments.”

With a grunt, Sam moved toward the coffee pot and fished a mug out of the cupboard above them. “Well I’m going to enjoy my three words, since most of the time all he does is grunt and point. I got words, grunts, and pointing this time.”

Bucky grunted. “Don’t get attached. I just like the kid more.”

Steve shook his head. “Ignore them Peter. They bicker.”

“We don’t bicker, Steve,” Sam argued. “We’re having an honest to God generational conflict.”

“Yeah, Stevie.” Bucky added, folding his arms. “Back in our day we called it not respecting your elders.”

“I got plenty of respect,” Sam countered. “Just need to learn to use your words, man.” He added some sugar and cream to his coffee. “But our elders aren’t always right—don’t believe, me just look at politics. Lots of whacked out elders there.”

“That’s like painting all the apples in the barrel for the one that got bounced on the sidewalk, cut away the bruising and you still got food to eat.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam stared at Bucky askance. “I’m talking about interpersonal skills and you’re talking about fruit.”

“It’s the same thing,” Bucky said mildly. “Folks got sour sides…check the mirror, I’m sure you could find one.”

After plating up the fresh pancakes, Steve passed it to Sam. “Just—don’t. Let it go, go eat, get to know Peter. Wanda should be on her way up…”

“The witch lady? She’s cool.” Peter seemed to think all of them were cool. Not that Steve was complaining, he didn’t think anyone ever accused him of being cool before.

“Yes, Queens. The witch lady, but we like to call her Wanda. It’s polite.”

“See,” Sam said, smacking Bucky on the shoulder as he passed. “He gets polite. What happened to you?”

“I understand polite, Wilson. Maybe it’s just the company that turns it off.” There was no real heat in the comments, but they weren’t letting up on each other and there was almost a gleam in Bucky’s eyes so Steve was going to take his own advice to Peter and ignore them. The elevator chimed and Wanda entered with significant more care and caution than Sam.

“Morning Wanda,” Sam greeted her and Peter waved. Bucky just nodded and turned to pull out more plates and passed them over to Steve.

“Hey Sam,” she kept quiet too, but Steve didn’t miss the wistful way she glanced around or the flicker of disappointment. Dressed in yoga pants and an oversized sweater, she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and her jewelry was still missing. It was weird, he’d gotten used to her always wearing so many rings or adding new earrings. Natasha had even given her a couple at one point. “Hi Steve…”

“Hey, c’mon in—Peter Parker, Wanda Maximoff…and you remember Bucky, right?”

The last couple of days had been a blur, too. So he wasn’t sure how much any of them talked really.

“Hi,” Wanda stretched a hand out to Peter, and he bopped up to shake her hand. “You were the spider kid, right?”

“Spider-Man,” Peter mumbled. “But yeah.” Then he slid back a step and motioned to the table. “You want to sit down? I can move my stuff.” He was gathering up the books.

“No, it’s fine,” she told him. “I can sit here.”

“You want some tea, Wanda?” Steve asked, already turning on the kettle.

“That would be nice, but you don’t have to go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” Bucky told her. “How do you take your tea? Eastern or Western European?”

Wanda’s surprised blink pulled another laugh from Steve, but it was Sam’s indignant snort that pulled a chuckle from everyone else, “I see how it is, gotta be a pretty girl to get Barnes to be polite.”

“Um, Mr. Wilson?” Peter raised a hand. “Sergeant Barnes…”

“Sam.”

“Bucky.”

Both men corrected him at once.

Wanda put a hand over her mouth, smothering laughter and then Peter cleared his throat. “Yeah, so—Bucky is polite to me and I’m not a pretty girl.”

A long moment passed and Sam just eyed Peter for the longest moment, before he said, “So that’s how it is?”

Bucky passed the carafe over to table so Sam could refill his coffee and smirked, “That’s how it is.” But his high five to the kid was what finished Steve; he couldn’t hold back the chuckle breaking out of him.

Bucky gave him a shoulder bump on his way past, to the cupboard.

“Jam please,” Wanda said. “If you have it.”

“We have jam…” Bucky said agreeably, before pulling out the tea box and sliding it over for her to select.

The quiet eruptions of laughter warmed the room, even if they strained to keep from being too loud. “Omelet or pancakes, Wanda?”

“Whatever you have…I don’t want to put you out,” she said.

“Make him work for it, Wanda. C’mon…he’ll just give you that disappointed look if you don’t,” Bucky advised.

“Okay, we’re not making this pick on Steve day, go back to beating up on Sam,” Steve told him and chuckled when Sam let out a second indignant squawk and Peter laughed.

“I do like the omelets,” Wanda admitted. “Cheese and ham?”

“You got it.” He switched pans after setting more pancakes on the warmer. The phone buzzed and Bucky got to it first as he passed over the jam to Wanda. “Stark’s on his way.”

The buzz in the room dipped then climbed again. Steve was glad he faced the stove because it gave him a minute. Buck leaned against the counter next to him. “Breathe. It’s gonna be fine.”

“I’m usually the one that has to tell you that,” he muttered.

Bucky chuckled. “Punk, I’ve been telling you to cool it for years. You’ve only done it for a few months.”

Not an unfair observation.

“Besides…” Bucky didn’t finish the comment, his attention riveted across the room and his whole demeanor changed.

Steve twisted and grinned. Nat leaned against the wall right next to her door. She was dressed in sweatpants, and a tank top along with her hoodie. She’d brushed out her hair and washed her face. Her attention was on all of them, and there was a weary but genuine smile on her face.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “Morning.”

“Hi…” Her greeting was lost in the swell of chairs and stools scraping as Wanda scrambled over to hug her, and the girl hesitated a beat then hugged her carefully before Nat gave her a squeeze. Then Wanda pulled away and Sam leaned over to wrap an arm around her, he was even more gentle than Wanda had been.

“Hey girl…looking good.”

“Hey Sam,” Nat chuckled. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Peter shifted from foot to foot, then Nat curled her fingers and the kid crashed right into her and hugged her tight. All of Bucky’s weight shifted forward a sec, but Steve caught his shoulder. “She’s fine,” he murmured. “Look.”

Nat had closed her eyes, but she gave the kid a squeeze before ruffling his hair. “I need to breathe, malen'kiy pauk.”

“Oh sorry,” Peter said with a wince, backing up and setting her down. “I was just really worried.”

“I’m okay,” she said, tapping him on the nose. “You in one piece?”

“Yeah, I’m great…Steve makes great pancakes.”

Natasha’s gaze skipped to he and Bucky and she smiled. “Yes he does.”

“Tea, doll?” Bucky asked, relaxing.

“Yes please,” she answered, and hooked an arm around Wanda who was leaning a little into her.

Sam motioned her over to the table, and Peter went to clear a spot for her. Steve smiled. Nat was still way too pale, and there were shadows beneath those eyes and in them he longed to make go away, but everyone being here was exactly what she needed.

The elevator chimed announcing Tony’s arrival, and he strolled in looking like he’d just walked out of his lab right down to the disheveled hair, and stained t-shirt and he had a box of donuts in hand. “I come bearing sugar,” he said. “And peace.”

Meeting his gaze, Steve debated his temper and set it aside—again. Nat looked somewhat relaxed and after the day before…hell after the last few weeks, he refused to make anything worse for her. “Hey Tony—omelet or pancakes?”

“Oh,” Natasha said. “Omelet for me please.”

Steve chuckled. “Spinach and mushroom, already ready to put in the pan for you.”

A warmer smile flashed across her face, and she blew him a little kiss. Bucky had the hot water poured for Wanda then poured coffee for Stark before setting up a cup for Natasha. Nat gave Wanda a little nudge toward her tea and glanced at Tony who hesitated, box in hand, studying her.

With a shake of her head, she crossed over to him and flicked his nose. He grimaced, but she gave him a hug and said something that was too low for Steve to catch over the hum in the room and Tony nodded as she let him go. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. Then carried the donuts over to the table demeanor shifting to something a little more upbeat. “You moving in Parker?”

Peter sputtered and Sam laughed. “Stark you could move his high school in and not notice all the occupants, but it would make parties challenging.”

“Point,” Tony said, dragging a chair out. “Okay, I can set you up a floor, but no house parties.”

Natasha chuckled as she made it to Bucky, and he pressed the mug of tea into her hands and then a kiss to her forehead, murmuring to her in Russian. She answered and then leaned up to give him a light kiss before turning to Steve. He didn’t hesitate and dropped a kiss on her lips. “You okay?” He asked quietly.

“No,” she murmured. “But I’m getting there.”

He preferred the honest answer even if he could wish it was a better result. “Clint’s coming up after PT.”

“Good.” Then she leaned back against Bucky as she sipped her tea and Steve moved to plate Wanda’s omelet before starting Nat’s. “Tony, omelet or no?”

He found Sam staring at him—no he was staring at _them_ —and he wasn’t alone, so were Wanda and Peter. Tony dropped the donuts on the table, and then said, “What you made for Wanda looks good or whatever you’re doing for Red.” It spiked through the tension and the stares fell away. That kind of attention usually made Steve’s face hot, but for once, he didn’t blink. Nat and Bucky were exactly where they should be and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.

Still there were bound to be questions. If there were, he’d deal with them later. He got Nat’s omelet going and glanced over to find Bucky giving him a slow nod. He approved, no apologies, no explanations. They knew and that was all that mattered.

“Natasha…” Wanda said. “I didn’t even know you knew Bucky.”

Or the questions would start now.

“Yeah,” Sam added slowly. “I think that was left out of the info packets.”

“It’s been a while,” Natasha said. “We have some catching up to do.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” But Sam’s tone had turned speculative. “Last I heard, you were on the other side of the fence where he was concerned. Then you let them go—so what part weren’t you sharing with the class?”

Before Steve could shut that down, Bucky said, “Natalia doesn’t need to explain a damn thing.” Everything in his tone warned against pursuing it further. “You’re here for breakfast and to see her, not interrogate her.”

“Woah…” Sam held up his hands. “I come in peace, just like Stark—but we haven’t seen her in months and now—you two are what exactly?”

“Um…” Peter said. “I think that’s kind of personal.”

“It’s okay, Peter,” Natasha said, and she put a hand on Steve’s arm, the touch light but it quieted his own objections. Sam was good people, but they weren’t going to do this to Nat. “James and I knew each other before—a long time before. And yes, quite a bit has changed.”

“But you’re okay,” Wanda asked, her tone a well of concern. “You’re back and you’re okay?”

“I’m as well as can be expected considering age and circumstance.” That was so not an answer, but it did earn her a chuckle from Sam.

“Girl, you are damn fine considering the circumstances, but you’re still a baby as far as the rest of that goes.”

So much they didn’t know and Nat didn’t enlighten them. “Thank you.”

Her omelet was ready and Buck took the plate. Nat gave Steve’s arm a squeeze. “You’re going to join and eat, too right?”

“Already fed me, Buck and Peter. Go on, eat and have your tea.” He tracked her over to the table. Bucky set her up in his chair, and moved another so he was firmly between her and everyone else. They got to visit, but they didn’t get to do much else and Steve couldn’t really disagree with his choice.

“So—in the interests of full disclosure, there’s a team meeting being called today in about three hours. Everyone…” Tony announced as he leaned back in his chair and shifted his gaze to Nat. “Needs to be there.”

“Team meeting with who?” Natasha asked, still cradling her mug of tea but not cutting into her omelet.

“Rhodey for one…” Tony said.

“He’s still angry.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think he’s confused,” Wanda said. “And maybe a little hurt.” There was an element of sadness in her tone. “None of us knew you were here…”

“…and apparently have been here,” Sam tacked on, his tone mild. “How long?”

“A few weeks,” Natasha admitted. “In the interests of—transparency—I’m still a fugitive and all of you can be held accountable for not turning me in.”

Quiet settled over the room and Steve plated Tony’s omelet, then turned off the stove and carried it over to the table. He set it in front of him, then moved to stand next to Nat’s chair. “We made a conscious decision to limit who knew what,” Steve told them. “Tony worked hard to get the pardons in place…Nat sacrificed to assure that the Avengers could come back together.”

“After what happened in Germany,” Tony said, then later Siberia. “We have a lot of trust issues between us—the most critical pieces meant making it safe for everyone involved. If you knew about Nat, it put you in a bind and it wasn’t something we could ask you if you were willing to know especially so soon after being cleared. The Raft is never happening again.”

“If it comes down to it,” Natasha added. “I’ll leave before I let them use me against any of you.”

Steve’s hand tightened on the chair, but he said nothing. He’d known that was coming. Nat would throw herself on the fire first, she always had. But she wouldn’t be leaving alone if it came to that. “It’s not going to come down to that,” Steve said.

“No,” Tony agreed. “It’s not. But anyone who wants off this merry go round, just raise your hand. No harm, no foul. You’re back, you’re in the clear. You can rebuild your lives.”

Wanda studied Tony and Sam stared at Steve. He met his friend’s gaze. Peter raised his hand, and Natasha chuckled. “Peter…you don’t have to raise your hand.”

“Feels like I should—and I’m fine with it. I don’t want you to go.”

She smiled at him, then took a sip of her tea. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want you to go either,” Wanda said finally. “I guess—I guess we’ve all been making snap judgments and struggling since…”

“…since Germany,” Sam finished for her, then looked from Steve to Nat. “You backed Stark’s play.”

“And I let Steve and James go. I’m not apologizing for my choices, Sam. I don’t expect you to do either.”

“No, you’re the woman who told Congress to kiss her ass.” He shook his head. “Just—it’s about trust.”

Steve frowned. “Natasha didn’t do anything untrustworthy. She took a stand, she was entitled to believe the way she did. She made choices. We respect it, and we accept it or we don’t get to move on.”

Tony cut into his omelet. “I did what I thought I had to, and hindsight…hindsight shows the places I went wrong. I can learn from it, or we can keep going round for round. No one here is really innocent…Parker don’t raise your hand. You’re innocent, you showed up because I asked you for help.” Tony pointed his fork to each of them, then said, “We screwed up. Rogers. Me. Even you Wilson…”

Sam frowned.

“You argued with me, Sam. You told me that you thought Bucky was the kind you stop, not the kind you save. You didn’t want to go after him. You had my back, but you didn’t want to be there. Even when Nat told me to stay out of it, you said she had a point.” Steve met his measured gaze. “You paid a price for following me even when you didn’t agree.”

The elevator chimed and Clint made his way in, but no one called out a greeting as the intensity in the room held steady.

“And I could have listened to Steve…when he showed up,” Bucky was saying. “But I was too used to being on my own, to having to run, to hiding and still trying to figure shit out in my head. I didn’t help.”

“Then I kept Wanda locked down because I wanted to keep the Committee or anyone else from arresting her—instead of telling her what was happening, I kept her in the dark thinking it was the right thing to do,” Tony finished.

“And I showed up cause Steve told me about the possibility of five more Winter Soldiers. I didn’t fill Vision in because I didn’t think he’d listen, I just kicked Wanda in the ass to break herself out.” Clint leaned on his cane.

Sam rubbed his temple, then shook his head.

“At the end of the day,” Tony said. “All Red did was try to keep us from killing each other…she stopped T’Challa so Steve and Bucky go could. That got her turned in to Ross…and everything else…has been a shit show and too long a story to go into here. I’m on her side.”

“So am I,” Clint said.

“And me,” Steve and Bucky echoed the sentiment.

“Me too,” Peter agreed.

“Count me in,” Wanda said. “I owe you an apology…”

Natasha frowned. “For what?”

“For throwing you into the luggage loader for one.”

Nat shrugged, and a smile tugged at her lips. “Barely left a scratch.” Which was a damn lie, but no one called her on it. “You can make it up to me with brownies.”

“Oh,” Wanda said, brightening. “I can do that.”

“Fine…” Sam said, spreading his hands. “Who am I to stand in the way of team harmony?”

“Are you really mad that we didn’t tell you Sam?” Natasha asked him, and he quieted as he studied her in turn.

“No, just sorry I couldn’t help more. I wasn’t thrilled with the news stories—and I hate that I thought you might actually be guilty of some of the stuff they were painting you with, even though I knew some of it was total bullshit.” He shook his head. “Won’t happen again…you read me in next time. I have your back, just like I have theirs…and even his.” The last was a grudging nod to Bucky.

“It’s okay. I won’t hold it against you.” Then she said, “At least until we’re training.”

He winced, but a round of laughter went through the room and the tension dispelled.

“Grab a seat, Clint,” Steve told him as he went to get pancakes. Natasha still hadn’t eaten anything, but Bucky cut into her omelet then held up a bite to her and she gave him a look, but ate it. “Pancakes and coffee coming right up.”

After Bucky got Nat to eat about half the omelet, and fixed her more tea, they’d moved to the sitting room. She was curled up on the sofa with Wanda and Peter in the chairs and Sam sitting on the coffee table. Wanda told them a story about the work she’d been doing in Sokovia, and it must have been funny because even Nat chuckled now and then.

Steve was washing up and Tony grabbed a towel to start drying the dishes Bucky was rinsing while Clint leaned against the counter and drank coffee. “How bad is it?” he asked, keeping it low.

“Don’t know yet,” Tony said.”Rhodey’s pissed…pissed that we didn’t tell him, pissed that I’m committing a crime, and pissed that he doesn’t see a way out. So we let him yell at us, and then we find a solution. He’ll come around.”

“You sure?” Bucky asked.

“No,” Tony admitted. “But I know Rhodey. He’s not a bad guy.”

“No,” Clint said. “He’s not, but he’s still military. He answers to more than the Committee and to us…we’re putting him in a hell of a position.”

Steve sighed, and glanced over at Nat. It seemed it was Peter's turn to tell some story that had Sam’s head in his hands, and Wanda covering her mouth with her hand.

“What about Vision?”

“No idea,” Tony admitted. “I can’t even begin to figure out what he’s thinking. We just have to ask him…”

“If he was going to turn her in, he would have already,” Clint said. Then nodded to Wanda. “I’m pretty sure if anyone has talked to him about it, it would be her.”

Not an unfair point.

“Then how about Steve and I meet with Rhodey first…then we do the whole team. You too, Barnes.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Bucky said drily. “But only if Natalia is up for it. He may have a right to his anger, but she doesn’t deserve the shots.”

“No,” Steve said. “Those are ours.” Rhodey could take it out on him, at the end of the day he was the team lead who made the call. Even after Rhodey had gone above and beyond to help with Bucky’s pardon, and after what the fight in Germany cost the colonel. “Any progress on the CQ containment?”

That was another axe hanging that they needed to wrap up, particularly since the items she’d found at Oscorp suggested it was a hell of a lot bigger than they already knew.

“Yeah, I’ve got more on that. Can fill you in with the rest of the team or we can meet after Rhodey…” Tony was giving him the command on that. Then he asked, “How is she? Really.”

At Tony’s question, Steve sunk another plate into the water to wash, careful not to snap it into pieces. “Friday not keeping you updated?”

“Stevie,” Bucky warned, but Tony raised his hands.

“No, he’s right to be angry. I deserve it.”

“Didn’t say he wasn’t right,” Bucky told him bluntly. “But I am telling you that neither of you are doing this here. You want to talk about it, take it away from Natalia.”

Steve passed the plate to Bucky as Clint said as he lifted his mug to his lips, “Guys, she’s very well aware of the quiet conversation over here and just because she isn’t looking doesn’t mean she can’t guess. Change the subject.”

“Yeah,” Steve added another plate into the wash and nodded. “We’ll figure out the game plan for the CQ after you read us into what you’ve found.” If he were one hundred percent honest he wasn’t sure how much of his anger was at Tony or at the whole situation. He really wanted something to pound, and there was nothing for him to hit in this situation.

Not really.

He couldn’t savage the past. No matter how much he might want to.

“Done.” Tony said, then glanced over to the sofas at another burst of laughter. “Barnes?”

“What?” Bucky spared him a look.

“I’m sorry.”

The two words hung there, and then Bucky nodded. “Thanks. Me too.”

A chime from overhead interrupted. “Yes Friday?” Steve said.

“Colonel Rhodes is on his way—he wanted me to make sure the meeting was still on…”

“Sounds like it’s showtime Rogers…you ready to get your ass kicked?”

“Are you?” Steve asked him drily.

“Sure,” Tony said with a wry grin. “We’ll do it together, right?”

“You two stay with Nat?” Steve said.

“Yep, we’ll be here.” Clint told him and Bucky shifted over to finish washing the dishes. Steve paused by the sofa to drop a kiss on Nat’s forehead.

“We’re going to meet with Rhodey first, then call in the rest of you. If you need to rest, you rest.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek, and she smiled at him.

“I’ll be fine,” she promised him, but she’d say that if she were bleeding out. He held her gaze for a long moment, and she nodded. They weren’t negotiating her taking care of herself, and she was letting them do it. “See you soon?”

“Definitely.” He nodded to the others before joining Tony in the elevator.

The moment the doors closed, however, Tony said, “Let me have it.”

“You remember how you said you wanted to punch me in my perfect teeth?” Steve folded his arms.

“Yep.”

“We’re pretty much right there,” he told him. “I get you’re concerned, and I know you want to protect her. It’s the only thing that keeps me from belting you.”

“I’d apologize again, but we both know I'd only half mean it.”

“Yep.” Steve agreed with him. “But I also know that half of you _does_ mean it—so I’ll take what I can get.”

“How is she…really?”

“Standing through some fucking act of God, she can still stand.” Steve admitted. “She wants to find her daughter—or at least find out what happened to her.”

“She wants to use BARF,” Tony said. It wasn’t a question.

Steve nodded. “And after last time…”

“She had a concussion last time,” Tony said, weighing it. “I’ll go over those readings again, tweak it, and when she’s recovered…”

He’d make it happen for her. If nothing else, Tony was consistent. He wanted to fix everything, he’d find a way to make it safe for her.

Small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

“When we get up there…let Rhodey yell at me,” Tony said. “Good five or ten minutes…it’s about what it takes for him to cool down then ask what happened and why we did it.”

“Ten minutes?” Steve couldn’t help the skepticism.

“Maybe fifteen,” Tony admitted, then the doors opened to the penthouse and Rhodey was already walking in from the deck terrace. “Platypus!”

“What the hell were you thinking, Tony?” Rhodey wound up, and then jabbed a finger toward Steve. “And don’t think I haven’t forgotten that you were in on it, too.” But he rounded right back on Tony. “How long have you been playing both ends against the middle? You have any idea what they would do to you? To the company? To Pepper? Does Pepper know? Did you make Pepper complicit? Dammit…Tony…”

Rhodey turned away moving slowly but steadily as he continued and Tony mimed his watch then held up ten fingers to Steve, before curling them and flashing them again. Ten plus ten.

So twenty minutes…

Steve folded his arms. Rhodey kind of reminded him of Phillips at the moment.

He could handle this.

Let him get it out of his system.

Then they could get back to work on fixing things…

“Seriously…I get that you like the woman and don’t think I’m not aware of all the good things she’s done, but she’s a fugitive…do you not get what that means….?”


	48. Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Wanda, and Rhodey address Nat's return and how it affects them

**Chapter Forty-Eight**

**Stories**

**Sam**

Sitting on a coffee table on Steve’s floor talking to Natasha, Wanda, and Peter while Clint and Barnes watched over them like sentinels wasn't quite how Sam imagined the morning would go. Then again, not much had been going like he thought it would the last few months.

Steve’s observation earlier that he’d acted against his own instincts because he trusted Steve’s judgment more than his own gave him food for thought. He still didn’t trust Barnes, not fully. The guy had issues, and while Sam agreed he’d been to hell and back, that didn’t mean he needed to be handled with kid gloves. If anything, he should be in therapy of some kind. Talking it out, and getting his head on straight.

But listening to him talk to the kid, to Wanda, and watching him with Natasha—he seemed an entirely different guy. It was like he saved all the rough edges and bristle for Sam, while elements of the charming man Steve used to tell him stories about emerged for the ladies, and the kid…

Then there was the kid. Fifteen years old and Stark recruited him to fight in Germany. The whole idea horrified him. Fifteen year olds should be in school not fighting enhanced or highly trained soldiers. It was a recipe for disaster at worst and child endangerment at best. But they were all rolling with it like it was normal.

Wanda seemed the most relaxed she’d been since she returned. The change in her demeanor and appearance had worried him frankly. Drastic shifts in how people handled themselves suggested underlying concerns that weren’t being addressed—like depression or anxiety. Considering what went down on the Raft, and the fact Wanda talked to no one about it… as far as he knew, it wasn’t surprising and yet his hands were tied. He couldn’t _force_ people to talk.

Then there was Natasha…he’d never been able to get a read on her. Not fully. She seemed the most put together and self-possessed woman he’d ever met. Yes, he’d nursed a crush on her for about five minutes—who wouldn’t? But Natasha Romanoff was not the kind of woman you asked out on a date. She was… dangerous, ethereal, earthy, and mysterious. She changed faces and attitudes like he did his socks, and no job seemed to intimidate her. She trained all of them—him in his wings, Rhodey in his suit, Wanda with her powers, Vision with his unearthly abilities, and Steve with his strength who could snap her like a twig with the same level of equanimity.

Nothing rattled her.

That confidence, Sam could admit, bolstered all of them and he knew _he_ had gotten better at what he did working with her. But before everything that went down with the Accords, he could never have predicted her backing Stark. That just made no damn sense. Not the least of which was how close she and Steve had _been_. Stark hadn’t been around much when their team had trained, and he didn’t show up for missions—occasionally he dropped by for a drink or chat with Steve or Nat or both, but…Sam didn’t know him.

He knew about him, from arm’s length, sometimes from the far side of the room. Steve opposed the Accords, resistance to it had been written all over him during the presentation. Natasha had simply sat there, listening, observing, reading the room—and what was it she’d said? They’d made some pretty public mistakes, and she was reading the situation. Getting a handle on it…and she’d agreed with Stark much to his shock and the shock of everyone else present.

Yet, here they all were, living together in the Tower, Natasha the only fugitive left among them and clearly there was more going on between her and Bucky and apparently her and Steve and maybe her and Tony?

The hell?

“Sam?” Wanda nudged him, and Sam blinked.

“What did I miss?”

“James was asking if anyone wanted more coffee or tea,” Natasha told him almost gently, and he met the shadowed, yet knowing green gaze. Shame edged up his spine. The woman had been through hell and he was sitting her speculating about her sex life. ‘the hell was wrong with him?

“Yeah, I’m good.” Sam said. “Two cups is all I let myself have each day. Gotta treat my body like a temple.” Frankly, he was jittery enough. They were due to head up in about forty-five minutes and neither Steve nor Tony had returned from meeting with Rhodey. Not sure what kind of sign that was.

He met Bucky’s gaze as the man took Natasha’s mug. “Too easy. I’ll pass.” Then he glanced down at her and murmured something in Russian, Sam thought. Wanda blushed a little and turned her attention to her hands. Sokovian wasn’t Russian, but the languages had a similar base—or at least Wanda and Nat had told him that at one point.

Even Sam glanced somewhere else as Natasha answered Bucky in the same language, it seemed too intimate and not like something he should stare at. He found Clint studying him. Clint was another guy he didn’t know that well.

“Hey Sam,” the man in question said. “I need to head back to my floor and change. Come take a walk with me.” It wasn’t a request.

“Yeah, sure.” He glanced at Natasha and Bucky briefly, then said, “It’s good to see you Nat.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Sam.”

Then he turned his attention to Bucky, and he couldn’t help but poke the bear. “James.”

“Dick.” The response was so automatic, and dry Sam actually chuckled. So, Natasha was the only one who got to call him that. Duly noted.

Wanda hid another smile, and said, “See you in a bit Sam.” He nodded to her. It was good to see her smile so that one went in the win column.

“Nice to meet you Parker, see you upstairs if you’re at that meeting…” Kid really shouldn’t be.

“Not sure I’m allowed to go,” Peter answered and he threw a look at Natasha, but whatever her answer was he didn’t catch it before the elevator doors closed.

“Ask,” Clint told him as the elevator descended.

“What?”

“Ask. It’s killing you trying to figure out the dynamic. But you’re dancing close to the edge of pissing Barnes off and you keep it up and it’ll be Rogers you irk. So ask.”

Sam folded his arms. “You and I don’t know each other that well.”

“No, which is why I can tell you that you don’t want to step onto that battlefield by accident.”

“It’s not a battlefield,” Sam argued. “It’s…who the hell is she with? Both of them? Stark? No one?”

“Does it really matter?” The genial response surprised him.

“Aren’t you the man that just told me to ask?” The doors opened to Clint’s floor and the man made his way out. He had the cane walk down. Even with the deliberate speed and the brace on his leg, he moved with a dangerous kind of grace. Quiet and unassuming as Clint Barton might be, only a fool would discount the threat he brought to the table.

“I am,” Clint said, as he headed for his room.

“Steve’s my friend.”

“Steve’s your hero.”

“Same thing.”

“No,” Clint told him. “Not at all.”

Sam frowned, and folded his arms, halting at the door to his room while Clint pulled out clothes from a dresser. “What are you talking about?”

Setting a vest on the dresser top, Clint eyed him. “Heroes can do no wrong. Heroes are the one who pave the way, and set the course. You admire the ever loving hell out of Captain America, and despite getting to know him, he’s indistinguishable from Steve Rogers.”

“So?” There would be no Captain America without Steve Rogers, ergo, he was the hero even when he wasn’t wearing the suit. Maybe especially when he wasn’t wearing the suit.

“So…friends we support even when we don’t always understand their choices. Sometimes we have to get in the way when we know damn good and well they’re making a stupid ass decision. Sometimes we have to step aside entirely because they need the wake up call—you care about them, but you’re not about to help them make a mistake.” He pulled out a pair of sweatpants, then shoved them away and pulled out a pair of black combat pants. “Heroes we’ll follow right into the fire no matter what we think of their decisions, because…they’re our hero, they have to be right even if we can’t see it. Especially when we don’t think our heroes can make a bad decision because their moral compass is steadfast, they always stand up to tyranny and the bully, and they’re so damn good it makes your teeth ache.”

“Dude,” Sam said slowly. “You don’t like Steve?”

“I like Steve just fine,” Clint told him, easing to sit onto the bed and putting his cane to the side before he went to work freeing the Velcro straps on his full leg brace. “He’s not a bad guy, a little naïve, and sometimes stubborn to the point of stupid—but he’s all right. Helps that I’m used to dealing with stubborn.”

“But you just said…” Sam studied him, the man had a point and he wasn’t discounting it, but he really didn’t sound like he cared for Captain America. “You like Steve but not Captain America?”

“Captain America is a symbol, a rallying cry, a costume…Steve Rogers is a man. Human. Fallible. Also capable of greatness. But he’s just a guy…no better or worse than you or me, even with a super serum. He has needs, demons, nightmares, hopes, and dreams. Easy to forget there’s a man there if you’re too busy elevating him on a pedestal.”

Brace off, he eased his sweatpants down and off with practiced ease. At some point he’d removed his shoes. Sam didn’t offer to help. Men like Clint asked when they wanted it and he seemed to be doing it all right. Instead, Sam turned the idea over in his head.

“He was a lonely guy…” Sam admitted. “Man out of time.”

Clint nodded once. “You’re a good friend, most of the time. He thinks highly of you.”

Worry scratched through him. “You think I’m being overprotective.”

“No, I know you are.” He set the sweats aside and worked the black pants on, balancing on his good leg when he pulled them up. “You’re worried about Barnes and what he’s gonna do, poking and prodding at him like you’re doing to land on the live grenade and hopefully take the blow so Steve doesn’t have to.”

“Guy has issues…and I don’t think Steve’s seeing it. He just sees the friend he grew up with and that can be dangerous.”

Clint chuckled. “Steve sees more than you think. But again, you’re thinking of him as the hero, the guy who can do no wrong. The guy who sees the best in people and genuinely expects them to step up to the plate and be their best selves.”

“You saying that’s not him?” Sam wasn’t sure where this was going anymore. Clint was Natasha’s best friend, and the guy had been mostly retired as far as Sam knew. He’d only met him a couple of times before Sam actually stepped up off the bench to be a full time Avenger.

“I’m saying that’s not the only him.” Clint got the pants buttoned, then swapped out his shirt for a vest. A line of sweat decorated his brow as he zipped it up, but the fatigue appeared nowhere else in his expression. “There’s the guy that goes to the wall for the people he cares about. There’s the kid who grew up in Brooklyn. There’s the team leader who sets aside his personal needs to look after the people under his command. There’s the best friend who feels like he’s let people down. There’s the guy in love with a woman who keeps having hell fall on her head and he feels like he’s the only shield standing between her and it.”

Then it clicked. “Man, I’m not going to push Natasha out just because I don’t get what’s going on between them all. I just—I don’t want to say the wrong thing and assume. The only things Nat’s ever said about Barnes to me was he’s a ghost and a damn dangerous one.” It was hard to reconcile that with what he’d seen on Steve’s floor.

“Let me ask you this—does it matter?” Clint wrapped the brace around his leg, despite the fact he’d broken it, had surgery and had to keep it braced up, it wasn’t looking too bad. Therapy was keeping the muscle in shape. The guy was putting in the time.

Did it matter? Steve was his friend. He used to think Nat was his friend—no that was unfair. Natasha was his friend. She hadn’t gone after him or done anything to him. She’d been fighting for what she believed and in the end, she came through for Steve at a hell of a cost to her. Did it matter if she was sleeping with any of them or none of them?

“Only in as much,” Sam said slowly, “as I want to know if I need to be ready to catch my guy if he gets hurt.” Cause Captain America versus the Black Widow, no contest, she’d eat him for lunch and he’d be left with the pieces.

“Then be his friend, and no one’s judge.” Clint finished securing the Velcro into place and then added the arm guards to his forearm—why the hell was he suiting up?— then eyed him. “We have enough problems to face, we don’t need to fight each other.”

“You know, the view must be pretty nice when you’ve been in the know from the beginning.”

“Sometimes,” Clint admitted. “But it doesn’t change the fact I’m their friend. From where I’m sitting, they need all the friends they can get.”

He couldn’t shake that there was more going on, but Clint was right—judging them, any of them, wouldn’t do anyone any good. “All right, then let me ask you a favor.”

“Name it.” It wasn’t an agreement. Hell, Clint had walked him right through this whole thing without explaining a damn thing. Go figure.

“Tell me if they need me to do more. Steve. Nat. Even Barnes.” He sighed. “You know check that, anyone, Wanda, Stark. If I’m not seeing it—kick me.”

“You see a lot Sam, you’re a good guy. Stable. Team could use more stability. So just keep being you.”

Sam laughed and shook his head. “Not sure how much that’s going to help us with everything we’re dealing with, don’t even get me started on this sludge business.”

“Eh, if they’re shooting at us—they’re bad. If it’s going to hurt people—we take care of it. Everything else is window dressing.”

“You kind of sound like Cap,” Sam told him and Clint grinned.

“Not the worse comparison ever made about me.” He offered him a hand and Sam crossed the room to take it, then gave him a tug to his feet and Clint rested his balance on the cane. “Ready for the meeting?”

“Hell no, apparently I need to grab my gear.” That was his guess based on Clint having slid a quiver onto his back and locked a bow to his side—broken leg or not. “Let’s do that and then… think we should make some popcorn for the show?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

 

 

**Wanda**

She couldn’t get over how familiar the scene and how utterly foreign it was at the same time. Natasha was there, she’d been there for weeks and no one had known. Well—Clint, Steve, Tony and apparently Bucky had known. Wanda wasn’t close with the latter two, but the former…Clint must have had a good reason to not tell her. Natasha summed it up when she described her fugitive status and the fact she was protecting the team. But they should have given Wanda a chance to protect her, too.

 _And why would they do that?_ Wanda hadn’t proven to be the most stable or reliable member of the team. Natasha was focused on something Peter was telling her, and perched on the arm of the sofa, close enough to touch yet not quite, Barnes watched over her. He paid attention, awareness of his observation swept over her every time those cool eyes turned in Wanda’s direction.

There was no threat in him. He’d relaxed considerably after Clint took Sam away to _chat_. Probably about Sam’s myriad of questions and concerns he seemed to have trouble containing. Not that Wanda didn’t have her own. Natasha was…different. It wasn’t just the injuries or the completely shifted dynamic between she and Steve or she and Tony. Bucky was still a relative stranger to Wanda, he seemed very nice but she’d also heard the stories. She remember the way Steve hunted for him and the look Natasha would wear, the weary resignation when she thought no one watched her.

So much had happened in the few months since Germany.

Everything changed.

But Natasha was _different_.

“So you can really move things with your mind?” Peter asked and Wanda smiled, then flicked her fingers, stiffening her index and thumb to lift his glass of water from the table and floated to his hand. His wide eyes and big grin pulled one from her. “That’s cool.”

“It can be,” she admitted.

“Want to help me do my hair?” Natasha asked and Wanda blinked at her. Natasha’s hair was pulled back and up. It looked fine. Then as if to explain, she said, “I’m going to change for the meeting. I should probably look like I belong rather than a hobo.”

“You’re beautiful doll, you don’t have to get dressed up for anyone.” The ease and confidence with which Bucky delivered the line pulled another smile from Wanda. He didn’t seem to care who heard them. He hadn’t when he’d murmured those endearments earlier and asked her if she needed anything. Wanda hadn’t understood every word, but the tone was clear.

“I do if I want to,” she told him, tilting her head back to look at him.

“Okay,” he agreed, then dropped a kiss on her mouth and Natasha smiled, really smiled. It was a radiant smile that warmed her from the core outward and made Wanda look away. The intensely private woman wasn’t hiding anything and it was so—strange. Not bad strange, but different. Peter’s face was red when his gaze collided with Wanda’s.

Wanda slid out of the chair and picked up her tea mug to return to the kitchen, but Bucky held out his hand. “I got it.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” But he didn’t move away until Nat stood and began heading toward her room with Wanda a half step behind her.

“I guess I’ll just hang out here,” Peter called.

Natasha paused at the door to her room and glanced at him. “Do you know how to do hair?”

If he’d been red before, he was the color of a tomato now and he sunk down in his chair. “Um…no?”

“Talk to James then…he knows how to do it.”

“Yep,” Bucky said from the kitchen. “Dames like a guy who can be useful. I can teach you how to braid hair if you want. It’s a good starting point…”

Wanda didn’t hear Peter’s answer as she closed the door. Natasha moved into her closet and studied the contents with her arms folded. The room was—not really personalized. But there were items tucked into various spots—a book on the nightstand, and a knife. Steve’s shield was tucked next to the nightstand on the other side of the bed. The bed itself was rumpled, and there were jeans on the floor that definitely didn’t belong to Natasha.

To cap it all off this wasn’t her floor, but she was clearly living on it.

Perching on the edge of the bed, she studied her friend and wrestled with whether she even had a right to ask the questions tingling on the edge of her tongue.

“How are you?” Natasha asked, glancing at her once before pulling down an emerald green blouse and examining as if deciding whether to wear it or not.

“I’m…I’m okay. Still getting used to being back,” Wanda admitted. “It’s—it feels like home and not at the same time. Sometimes it’s great—you know I get up and go out to the kitchen and Sam is there cooking and Clint comes out to have coffee…sometimes Vision…Vis shows up. Tony even came over the other day and cooked breakfast.”

“But?” Natasha prompted her, hanging the shirt back up and stepping deeper into the closet. It was easier to answer these questions with her attention elsewhere. Which was strange, all she’d wanted for the last few weeks was to talk to Natasha, to have Natasha to talk to and help her make sense of things. That was if she’d even talk to her after everything that happened.

Wanda looked down at her hands. “They know…but they don’t know. It’s the same but it’s not. You and Steve aren’t there. Clint’s…Clint’s sad. And in pain. Sometimes I want to fix it, but he doesn’t talk about those things.”

“He just changes the subject and talks about what’s going on with you,” Natasha said with some authority.

“It’s very frustrating,” Wanda complained.

“It’s Clint,” Natasha countered. “But that’s not what’s really bothering you Washenka. It’s just you and me. Talk to me.”

The endearment caught her off guard, and she clasped her hands together. “The Raft.”

Natasha appeared in the doorway, her gaze steady. She was still so pale, and she’d been so hurt and nearly died, but she was standing there like a rock in the storm and it was that rock that Wanda needed.

“After…The Raft. We went to Wakanda for a while. It was nice…you’d like it.” Wanda licked her lips. “But…Steve was sad, all the time and Clint missed his family and Scott was—he was funny, you know like Sam can be funny. Nothing seemed to rattle him, and it was nice to be around when I…I couldn’t focus. But I didn’t belong in Wakanda.”

Natasha leaned against the doorway, a jacket in her hands. Her expression was placid and her eyes so calm. Everything about her was calm and the knot holding Wanda together loosened. Natasha was different, but she was also the same.

“I went to Sokovia because I thought I needed to go home. It’s very different…even from when Pietro…” Her heart squeezed. She would never not miss her brother. The world had become a much darker place that day. “Than even when Pietro and I were young. We were homeless for a while…I told you that I think.”

“You did,” Natasha answered in her smooth rasp. “You both found odd jobs. Sometimes Pietro stole food for you. You were both very clever, always staying ahead of the authorities lest they separate you.”

“That was our greatest fear, for so long. I could not imagine a world without him. I still can’t, yet I live in one.” She sighed, trying to push past that melancholy. “Anyway, the crater—the crater that is where the part of the city was—is being reclaimed and turned into a park. I worked with the volunteers, planting flowers, and trees, and making pathways. They’ve dug out ponds and put in playgrounds…it’s…really nice. I liked what I was doing there. Nobody knew me, or my mistakes. They weren’t afraid of me.”

That was the hardest part. The people who were afraid of her. The Committee had been. The whole time she spoke to them, their fear had been like a noxious and cloying perfume digging at her skull.

“I could just be me.”

“But you were lonely, too.” Natasha summed up so succinctly Wanda blinked. “Because no one knew you. Knew what had happened to you. No one could share your pain, and help you find perspective. You had to be someone else, someone who had none of those things happen to her—even the things she doesn’t want to talk about yet.”

Sometimes Wanda thought she wasn’t the only one with telepathy, but Natasha never exhibited anything other than her extraordinary insight.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about The Raft.” Admitting it aloud would make it all so real again. The straight jacket. The cell. The ways she couldn’t get free. Trapped. Alone. A shudder went through her… “They…I didn’t even realize what they were going to do until they did it.”

Natasha crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to her. It took her knowing gaze off of her, but she slipped an arm around her.

“I didn’t fight back until it was too late…I didn’t know they could lock my powers like that, that I would be helpless again. Only Pietro wasn’t there and the guys were in other cells, I was…alone.” Wanda shivered and Natasha tightened her arm, then she combed her fingers through her hair as the tears slipped down her cheeks. “It’s so stupid—I can move things with my mind. I could have turned them all on each other…but I didn’t think they were going to put us in that place and then they pumped all these sedatives into my system and I couldn’t focus. By the time I could, my arms were trapped. It was dark, and it was cold, and…”

All the fear and the isolation poured out of her. She ended up curled on her side, her head in Natasha’s lap as Natasha murmured to her. This wasn’t what she meant to do and gradually, piece-by-piece, she came back to herself and shame flushed through her.

“Shh,” Natasha murmured.

“It’s stupid…they didn’t rape me or hurt me…but…” She didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“Washenka, they didn’t have to do those things. They took away your freedom and your control. You were utterly dependent on them…that is…that is sometimes worse than other tangible violence. You can survive an attack. You can heal a wound. But being made helpless…it haunts you.”

That was a very good description.

“I tried to tell Vis…because…he wants us to be friends again and it’s hard. So hard to look at him and know…he’s part of the reason I was in that place. I know he didn’t know and I believe Stark…Tony,” she amended the last. “He didn’t know they were going to do it. But…”

“But knowing is not enough. They made you afraid.”

Yes. They had.

She’d gone to sleep with that fear each night, in Wakanda, in Sokovia, and here. She ran from it, she tried to change herself to pretend to be someone else, but as soon as she wasn’t paying attention to it…

“Do you want to me kill the men who did it?” The question so calm, and straightforward had her blinking past the tears to stare up at Natasha’s very direct gaze. “You can tell me their names. I will make sure they can never find you again. Would that help you sleep?”

It was the most horrible, and genuinely kind offer she’d ever received. “I don’t know.”

“Then we shall put that in our pocket for now.” Nonplussed, relaxed. Then again, Natasha was the one who taught her she had to make looking over her shoulder second nature. “What can I do for you?” She resumed combing her fingers through Wanda’s hair, she’d loosened the ponytail and the gentle sensation eased some of the jagged edges of her confession.

“I…I don’t know. How do I make it stop? How do I close my eyes and not expect to open them in that cell again? How do I not freeze up and let that happen to me again?”

“Face it,” Natasha told her, still kindly. “Some haunting images never fully go away, but you can face them and make them your own. You can use them to empower you, and to strengthen your resolve. You can train…train so if your powers are compromised the rest of you isn’t. Train so you can discipline your mind to think past the drugs…push yourself to know what your limits are. Believe in yourself.”

“So…all that or kill the guards and officers at the Raft?” The options were so radically different.

“Don’t limit yourself,” Natasha advised. “We can do all of the above. The latter isn't a solution so much as a comfort, but the former may prevent it from happening again.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and then a laugh bubbled out of her even as fresh tears fell. “You’re serious.”

“I am…you know where I came from.” They rarely ever talked about it. Like once and Natasha shut her down then. “You saw in my mind.”

“I’m still sorry…”

“Shh,” Natasha quieted her. “I forgave you a long time ago. You didn’t understand what you were doing.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Wanda admitted. “I wanted to hurt Tony Stark and you and the other Avengers were in the way. And…I was stupid enough to believe in Ultron.” What a mistake that had been, but then Vision came from all of that, so—maybe even in chaos and darkness something good could be born?

“You are going to find that the things we believe in…”

“Oh please don’t say depend on a certain point of view.” She truly didn’t like those movies and everyone quoted from them—even in Sokovia.

Natasha chuckled. “No I save the _Star Wars_ references for Peter and Tony. They truly enjoy them…oh and the live long and prosper from _Star Trek_ freaks Tony out sometimes.” She flashed the Vulcan hand signal. “Especially if you turn it upside down.”

“I don’t know that one, what does it mean?”

“Die soon and despair,” Natasha said without a twitch of an eye.

“It does not,” Wanda argued. But Natasha’s serious expression didn’t change. “Really? I thought the Vulcans were all emotionless and stuff.”

“No, the Vulcans are probably the most passionate race in all of the Federation,” Natasha mused. “They are so tempestuous they had to learn to discipline their emotions with logic, to create structure and form lest they as a race destroy themselves.”

“Oh my god,” Wanda pushed to sit up and stared at her. “You’re a Trekkie.”

A mildly amused grin curved her lips. “Maybe…or maybe I just think Vulcans are hot.”

Wanda laughed out loud at that. “I can’t—I can’t. It’s enough wondering if you and Steve were in a relationship all this time and I missed it and now you’re with Bucky, too…I don’t get it. I can’t with the Vulcans.”

“But you feel better, don’t you?” She skated right past the first part of the statement.

Oddly enough, Wanda did. She swiped away the dampness from her cheeks as Natasha rose and retrieved a comb from the bathroom. Then she was combing Wanda’s hair before neatly separating and plaiting it. “I thought I was going to do your hair.”

“Just girl code to let James know you needed to talk to me and we would need some privacy.”

“Oh.” Well… “Natasha?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I want you to kill those guys.” It just—it wasn’t the right choice to make.

“All right,” Natasha accepted her decision with grace. “Just let me know if you ever change your mind.”

“And…if we can resolve things so you don’t leave…will you work with me again? Train me again?” She’d always eschewed learning to fight physically because why did she need to? After the Raft, now she knew.

“Yes.” No conditions, no change of terms, nothing. She finished Wanda’s hair and took a step back. “That looks better. Go wash your face while I change…and when you’re ready, pick up your jewelry again if you want. You don’t have to be anyone you don’t want to be.”

When she returned from the bathroom, Natasha stood there in her tact suit. She’d even slid on her widow’s bites. She’d braided her hair to the side so it hung over one shoulder. Despite the uniform, Natasha looked paler if that was possible.

“Are you expecting a problem at the meeting?”

“Plan for the worst,” she reminded her. “But hope for the best.”

Wanda glanced down at herself. “We should stop on the guest floor then…”

“Suiting up?” Natasha asked with a raised brow.

“I think so,” Wanda said slowly.

“Then we’ll stop at the guest floor on our way up.”

It still wasn’t quite home yet, but they were definitely a step closer.

 

**Rhodey**

 

 

Neither one of the stubborn idiots standing across from him were really listening to him. Of course, he probably sounded like a mad dog let off his leash, but he just… “C’mon Tones, why you gotta always make me the bad guy?”

“Forty. Eight. Minutes,” was Tony’s response. “Damn.”

“What?” He frowned at him and Steve shook his head, almost wearing a smile as he glanced from Rhodey to Tony. What the hell was so funny?

“Forty-eight minutes, Platypus. That’s a records long lecture for you. Damn man…you been practicing?” Tony grinned and headed toward the kitchen. “I’m getting you some water. You probably need it after all those words. Want some coffee too? Or how about a drink? Nah—it’s too early for drinking.”

That made Rhodey blink. Tony Stark had never met an hour he couldn’t turn into a reason for cocktails.

“Tones—we’re not done talking.”

“No, I know, but water man. Gotta hydrate if you want to keep it up and maybe we should all sit. Being on your feet isn’t good for fossils, so we need to look after Cap.”

Cap, for his part, just rolled his eyes. “Rhodey…”

“No, Cap, you and I are not that friendly yet,” Rhodey told him. “We’ll go back to Colonel or Rhodes for a bit. If that’s all the same to you.”

“Fair enough,” Steve said, holding up his hands.

Tony returned with three water bottles, and passed them out before motioning them to his living room. When Rhodey would have said something, Tony held up a finger. “Point of order, I showed extraordinary restraint in listening to that _whole_ lecture without a) interrupting you or b) tuning you out or c) falling asleep. So I think in acknowledgement of my going above and _beyond_ , it’s my turn to speak.”

Sitting down, Rhodey sighed. Tony had a point. Normally he would have checked out five minutes into a diatribe. Tony did something crazy, Rhodey scolded him, Tony shrugged it off, and they returned to normal…granted Tony didn’t always shrug it off, but this was…leagues beyond some of the crap he’d pulled in the past. Unscrewing the water bottle he said, “Fine. Your turn.”

If the Committee or the government or any of a dozen different agencies figured out what Tony had done he’d be kissing more than his freedom goodbye. They’d go after his money, his designs, and his company. He could lose _everything._

Tony scratched his chin then said. “She’s my friend.” Then he took a long swallow of the water, and leaned back in the chair.

Rhodey rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re risking so much…when you already put so much on the line for Cap and Barnes, and everyone else on the team.”

With a shrug, Tony took another drink. “Everyone else is home. We just need to get her cleared, and she can be here, too.”

“She’s already here Tony,” Rhodey pointed out, not like he needed to. “You’ve known where she is or had her here for months, haven’t you?”

“In the interests of not making you an accessory, I’ll decline to answer the question.”

Cap dropped onto a chair and sat with his arms braced on his thighs and twisting the bottle in his hands.

“No, you both knew,” Rhodey said after a while. “You knew even before she sank Ross.”

“Ross needed to go,” Tony pointed out. “He wasn’t an ally, and he was manipulating the Accords…”

“Yeah, I know he was,” Rhodey said, waving off that objection. But she was linked to terrorist acts, and then there was her history…assassinations, spying, foreign powers, intelligence… “If SHIELD had never gone down…or if she hadn’t let her records out…”

“Both had to happen,” Cap said quietly. “I’ve regretted every moment of exposure she suffered for that, but it was her choice. Dumping all the files, all the secrets—leaving it vulnerable to the scrutiny of the world pulled Hydra out of the shadows. For the most part…we’ve stomped them out.”

“The most part,” Rhodey echoed, nodding his head. “That doesn’t mean all of them.” He glanced at Tony. “That’s what you were doing on your building days?” So much more was making sense. Tony’s political moves, his quiet shifting of power to prop up figures more sympathetic to the Avengers, but also capable of moving the playing field.

“Some of it—problem is we can’t ever assume Hydra is gone. The last time someone made that assumption they hid themselves in SHIELD.” Despite wanting to deny the possibility, Rhodey couldn’t argue with Tony’s assertion. It had happened.

Friend.

Natasha Romanoff was Tony Stark’s _friend_. Rhodey understood exactly what that meant. Nothing he said or did was going to talk Tony down from all this. “Fine…how much of the charges against her is she actually guilty of?”

“More than you'd probably like, but nowhere near as much as she's accused of…” Steve said. “There might be things dating back to her time at the KGB—or even charges associated with what she did for SHIELD. But she had nothing to do with Nick Fury’s death. I was with her, I can vouch for every moment.”

“Even the part where she was supposedly still under the thumb of some hidden masters?” The evidence Ross had on that was compelling. Sickening, but compelling. The idea she’d been mind wiped at all was horrifying enough, but if they couldn’t trust her mind…then who was the person they knew?

“It could have happened, “Tony admitted. “But even if it did—that right there is evidence of her innocence. Coercion doesn’t make a person guilty of anything. She’s the victim.”

Sitting back, Rhodey stared off. If his superiors asked him any direct questions and he answered in the negative now, he was looking at a Court Martial time in Leavenworth. Then again…they weren’t likely to ask him.

The Committee on the other hand…they _had_ asked. More than once.

“What about the part where Ross tried to get her to kill the two of you? She was all spaced out.”

“It was act,” Steve told him and Tony nodded.

“She was setting him up. There’s a method of interrogation she uses where she lets them interrogate her, or asserts their authority, then she lets them trip over their own egos and confidence.” Tony sounded like he spoke from experience.

“Okay—so even if she did actually violate the Accords when she let Steve and Barnes…”

“But that’s just it,” Tony said. “I don’t think she did. Not…if you adhere to the strict letter of the Accords and what we were agreeing to.”

Even Steve looked surprised.

“Look, the Accords require us to not engage unless explicitly approved by the Committee—or unless there is the threat of real and tangible loss of life. It also states, we have to prevent harm through action or inaction as necessary to end conflicts as swiftly and peaceably as possible to minimize threats to bodily harm, and to diminish property damage as possible.”

Rhodey frowned. “But she attacked T’Challa.”

“Who has since withdrawn his complaint in consideration of subsequent information we didn’t have access to at that time, declaring she did minimize threat to life and limb by intervening when he was in an unreasonable frame of mind.” Tony spread his hands. “I know I was pissed when it happened. I was—more than pissed. I told her they were coming for her and she left—that’s on me. But letting them go was the right call…even if I couldn’t see it then.”

In pursuit of the quinjet, Rhodey had told Vision to disable Sam, turn him into a glider and Sam avoided the hit that Rhodey took. There was no guarantee friendly fire might not have taken any of them out, they were hardly playing with squirt guns and nerf darts.

It wasn’t predictable to think letting them go would result in the injury. Natasha had taken her own share of hits. The explosions on the ground, being flung into heavy equipment and she’d been the only on their side _not_ wearing armor.

“Then we need a plan,” he conceded finally. From the moment Tony called her his friend, he’d already accepted he had to get on board. Tony wouldn’t abandon a friend, he had too few and valued them far more highly than most people could understand. He glanced at Steve, and then back to Tony. The fact these two made peace at all was a testament to that.

“I have a plan,” Tony said. “It’s already in motion and that’s all I’m saying on it.” The last he said with a long look at Steve. “I’m not getting anyone’s hopes up, but I haven’t stopped working on this from the beginning. What we need to focus on now is getting the CQ material on lockdown, tracking where Roxxon’s materials went and where the Oscorp pieces ended up.”

“Let me guess,” Rhodey said before taking a long drink from his bottle of water. He was a little parched. “You have a plan for that, too?”

“Actually,” Tony said with a slow smile. “I think Friday and I managed to refine the tracking algorithm, we’re down to three locations.”

“You had that in your back pocket this whole time,” Steve said, with a slow shake of his head.

“Yep,” Tony grinned absolutely unrepentant and Rhodey had to laugh. Tony let him vent, then once he’d gotten off his chest, showed him the way to the party bus, The man never changed…and that wasn’t a bad thing. “Just needed my honey bear onboard…but this is going to be team effort.”

“Boss,” Friday announced. “The team is on their way up.”

“I love a good entrance,” Tony said pushing out of the chair, then looking at Rhodey. “We’re good right?”

“Yeah, Tones. We’re good.”

Tony gave his shoulder a squeeze before turning to greet the team stepping off the elevator. They were all geared up like they expected a fight, from Spider-Kid to Barnes. Hell, even Clint with his leg in the brace and Natasha who’d been shot what three days before, had suited up.

Crazy.

Every single one of them.

So that meant everyone was on board except…

Vision landed on the platform outside and was the last one inside. Speak of the devil. He strolled in like they had these meetings every day, and he nodded to Tony, Cap, and Rhodey then glanced at the team and said, “Welcome back, Ms. Romanoff. I do believe the team has been missing your valuable input.”

Well…how about that?


	49. Signal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers go after the sludge...

**Chapter Forty-Nine**

**Signal**

**Tony**

 

 

Tony altered his course, streaking ahead of the quinjet but not leaving it too far behind. Nat was sitting in the pilot’s seat with Clint riding shotgun. They would drop off Vision closer to the Water Gap before continuing on to the drop point for Cap, Barnes, Wanda and Peter. Still on the fence about using Peter for the op, he’d agreed only after Natasha added ground rules to Cap’s orders and Cap signed off on them.

Peter was a support position only. He was to play backup and engage only as needed if the others required the assistance. When he complained about being left on the bench, Natasha merely said they could leave him at the Tower entirely if he couldn’t play well with the team.

It was no surprise that Peter acquiesced. Vision’s reluctance to engage directly at the facility they were en route to did surprise him. However, they were expecting some heavy resistance in the form of a private security force numbering some thirty to fifty strong. Vision did not want to engage people. Steve listened to his objections, studied the map then put him at the Water Gap where the hydro power station was located. The station needed to stay online, but it also had a liquid nitrogen cooling system they might have to hijack.

The Sparta Mountains were part of the Appalachian range, and this time of year, there was snow on the ground. A light layer, but the temperature hovered around freezing. Probably a reason they’d pulled the materials here. The only question they didn’t have an answer for was, were Connors and Stillwell the instigators behind it, had they made the arrangements to steal the CQ-A supplies before emptying out what Oscorp was sitting on, or had they been scooped up by some other unnamed group?

Frankly, Tony found himself hoping for the former because scientists with a theory to prove were bad enough—throwing in a group with an unknown agenda would just make it worse. Frankly, at this point, he didn't want to know what worse looked like. Not ever.

“War Machine secure, first wave of FBI agents have arrived at Roxxon Corporate. On overwatch as they serve the search warrants and detain Frank Osterman, Jared Kean and Lance Dupree.” All three men had been listed in the files as the senior oversight for the CQ project, Osterman was also CEO and had worked out the military contracts. Kean was the head of their special projects division and the man Baskin reported to, while Dupree played some function his corporate assignment as Special Senior Assistant to the Office of Special Projects made unclear. Either way, Tony’s contacts at the FBI found the evidence compelling enough to act on it in conjunction with the team.

The fact one of the alphabet agencies invited them in, also gave he and team some cover with the Committee. Talbot wouldn’t like it. But Tony didn’t care. Steve had asked him if it would compromise anything—like Tony’s plan to clear Natasha—to keep Talbot out of the loop and Tony didn’t think so. Talbot wanted the mess cleaned up, and the materials secured. He probably also wanted possession of them again, but at the moment, they were all in agreement the CQ materials needed to be contained and maybe launched into space, but no one else was getting them into their grubby research paws.

“Falcon secure. My team is sitting a block out from Oscorp. Sync’d to go in and serve warrants when you engage.”

“Standby guys,” Steve answered. “We’re ten minutes out.”

“We’ve got some high winds in the area,” Barton warned. “Storm moving in so watch yourselves out there.”

“Skim us close to the ground for the drop,” Steve told him and Tony angled back, he wouldn’t begin his strafes until they were on the ground, which meant he had the time to make sure their drops were secure. Red had chafed a little—a tensing of her jaw which for her was almost a full grimace—when Steve parked her on the quinjet for the op. She was still recovering and probably shouldn’t be out here at all, but she wasn’t going to be left behind and Steve was still bruised to hell. The silent argument between them had been…while not fun, definitely enlightening. Barnes ended it with a well-placed, “It’s Jersey, it’s going to suck wherever we’re sitting. I’ll watch Steve’s back, doll. You watch ours.”

That was it.

Blowing out a breath, Tony shook his head internally. He envied the hell out of the three of them and it was starting to burn. Especially after Red murmured to him that he and she were due for a long conversation about his peeping ears. Ears didn’t peep, but whatever, he got the point.

Line crossed.

He was just glad she hadn’t broken his nose right then and there, but it wouldn’t have touched a shade of the pain she had to be in. Without a lot of data, he had begun as series of discreet searches for U.S. camera footage circa 1972 to 1974, as well as looking for anything in the Amalfi Coast. If he could backtrack her path, maybe he could help her find some answers.

Probably overstepping again, but fuck it…she wanted to use BARF and for once, Tony didn’t believe the technology was the answer. They’d gotten damn lucky when she woke up from her coma the last time. He’d told Steve he would work on it, but he had Friday lock it all down, no access, not even for Red—not until he went over every piece of hardware, software, and neural interface with a fine tooth comb and hopefully in the meanwhile found her answers a different way.

“Stark, we’re about to make our drop,” Steve pulled his attention back to the mission at hand.

“Acknowledged, I’ll see you guys on the other side...” Switching HUDs, he began scanning the facility. It was tucked behind snow laden trees in a very picturesque area, but the old sewing machine factory had been converted for ammunition production during World War II then repurposed for fuel research in the mid-seventies including adding a refinery to it, before shutting down in the 80s. Or supposedly—research turned up ownership through a variety of shell companies that he was still trying to peel all the layers back on.

Their search algorithms all pointed here.

“Give me a reading on if there is a gamma signature here, Friday.” He made a side sweep to circle the primary building, the fuel storage tanks were lined along the side of the second building with piping connecting to a refinery in the third.

“Gamma signatures confirmed Boss, the low frequency readings are actually quite high here.”

Bullets began to plink off his armor, and he ignored it as he studied the energy readings off the tanks. They were hot, not cold. Something heavy hit his back and his armor ejected the claw grenade and it exploded a few feet below him. Pivoting mid-air, he targeted the grenade launcher, disabled it, then took the guy out at the knee.

A new and kinder Accords said minimize loss of life. Maiming didn’t seem a much better alternative, but the U.N. insisted. Three more along the roof, and he put them down with equal force before resuming his scan.

“Body heat signatures?” He wasn’t seeing a lot, but there was a lot of red and orange on his screen. Those tanks were too damn hot if the CQ-A was in them.

“Hard to determine boss, getting a lot of heat off those tanks. If the CQ-A is contained within them, that’s an unsafe level.” More gunfire targeting him, and these were hitting with considerable force.

“Cap, heads up—I’m not finding a cooling system for the material, which means it’s running hot.” He targeted the various shooters, and took them out of the equation. A count on the upper corner gave him eight down, no nine now. That still left too many for the rest of the team particularly with such unsafe conditions. “Not sure we should push it.”

“Do we have a choice?” Steve asked. “If it’s running that hot, we’re looking at critical mass in how long?”

Tony did the mental math. Frankly, he was surprised it hadn’t blown already. Arcing over toward the refinery he said, “Any time now.”

There was a beat and Steve sighed. “We can’t leave this active.”

No they really couldn’t.

“Clint, move the quinjet in closer, we may need a faster extraction, Tony—shift your flight pattern to bring you closer to us. Spider-Man, hang back here with me—Wanda get ready for those doors to open. Buck, you in position?”

“Yep,” came the relaxed reply. “Want me to knock on the doors?”

“Let’s try ringing the bell…”

The breach explosion was a lot quieter than it could have been. Barnes took out the hinges on the main door with carefully targeted shots and Wanda caught the door as it fell outward, and set it down. Tony slipped past them as they headed inside to get a good look at the interior and to give them overwatch while Barnes climbed down from his perch.

“You guys are about to have company,” Barton told them. “We’ve got a couple of tankers on the road heading in your direction.”

Tony didn’t swear, but he wanted to when Natasha said, “They’re flagging hot, too. What are they doing with the CQ?”

Had they found a way to actually purpose it for fuel? Tony doubted it. “No idea, and…” he hesitated. “Hold. Everyone hold…” Cap and Peter were in full armor, Wanda and Barnes were not.

There were a dozen bodies on the platform Tony hovered over. All uncontained and there was nothing keeping them where they were…but the black veins stretching along their faces, and across their hands was _not_ a positive sign.

“What are you seeing?” Cap asked.

“ _Day of the Living Crude_ —Friday get me readings on this equipment,” he said spinning to look at the row of terminals and beyond those tanks…

“That was the set up they had at Roxxon,” Red said over the comms. “Middle terminal should be main control, right and left are balancing for fluid transfer. You want the middle one.”

Tony zipped won to it with another cautious glance at the bodies behind him.

“Tony…”

“I see it.” He did. The black ichor spider webbing over their skin was getting deeper, and darker. At the center console, he scanned the controls, then brought up the monitoring.

The word breach flashed over the screen along with a redline alarm, but there was no klaxon in the building.

“Get me into the system,” Red said. “I can work it from here, and you guys get away from those people before they…”

A scream from behind him drowned out her words and Tony turned just in time to take a hard slam to his helmet that knocked him over the system and towards the tanks on the floor.

 

**Bucky**

The scream from ahead was not good. Not even five minutes in and it was all going to hell. He shared a look with Steve. Just like old times.

“Stay here,” Steve said. “Secure the exit, if anyone tarry or sludgy looking at all approaches, disengage and get as far away as you can.”

Bucky could have predicted Steve’s next act without any clues. He took off deeper into the facility. Shaking his head, he switched weapons for the SAW. It did a lot more damage. “Stick close to Wanda, kid,” he told Peter before he followed.

Steve might be wearing Stark's new armor, but Bucky wasn’t about to let him face whatever the hell this was on his own. He was heading up the metal stairs to get a better vantage point before the witch or the Spider-Punk could protest.

“He’s fifty meters ahead,” Natalia said into the comms, probably to Steve. “I’m still getting some readings from his HUD—there are at least a dozen infected with him.”

The heat inside sweltered around him, despite the snow outside it was a sauna in the factory. Bucky made it to the third level by the time he caught up with Steve.

“We’re getting biometric readings…they’re off the charts strange…” Natalia again. The cool control in her voice, the professionalism, it gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the way he’d gutted her with the news.

“How strange?” Steve asked, jerking shield up as Bucky landed on the metal catwalk next to him. The dirty look just made Bucky smile. Punk might have been doing this a while, but Bucky had been doing it for decades. He studied the layout. There were too many bottlenecks in this place. A glance below told him the main floor remained clear.

Another roar ahead had his gun up and at the ready as he continued forward. It was a maze of catwalks, old equipment, tanks, and barrels. Some was in disrepair, but more of it looked recently replaced, like they were upgrading the facility.

“It’s hard to tell,” Natalia continued. “I’m in their system and it’s erroring out on the fluctuations they’ve got on all of those tanks…Steve that whole place is unstable. You need to get out of there.”

“We can’t leave this stuff here to just blow…not unless we’re sure the conflagration would take it out.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this…not even in explosives. I’m trying to find out what happened to the cooling systems and see if I can reroute. Vision is checking the dam and the Water Gap, turning the water on if it’s off…”

“Good plan, stay on it Angel. How close are you and Clint?”

“We’re close enough to blow you a kiss, Cap…and I’ve got eyes on those tankers, you have maybe ten minutes, probably less before they’re on top of you.” Clint's dry tone made Bucky smile. The archer was definitely cool under pressure. A useful trait to have in a sniper, and a friend.

Another problem. Steve gripped the rail, glancing back the way they’d come, and then ahead. That was a lot of different problems… “Wanda?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Think you and the kid can handle the tankers?”

“What do you want us to do with them?”

“Separate them and get them out of here. We don’t know what’s inside them but if it’s more CQ-A…we don’t want to throw more gasoline on the fire.”

Bucky checked their position while Steve worked out the strategy, when Steve gave him the nod, he started forward Steve at his back.

“I can try…two is going to be harder than one.”

“Do what you can. Bring in Vision if you have to.” Steve told her, and then shook his head again. “Dammit.”

At least he’d tapped off his transmitter before he said it.

“They’ll be fine. You said the witch was solid.” Bucky reminded him. They didn’t have time for her to be anything else. Clint and Natalia were also just outside, they could help…as long as Natalia stayed on the damn jet.

“She is—but this is already off plan.”

The screaming was getting closer, but so far they hadn’t met any charges nor had they heard from Stark. This wasn’t good. “Well, look at it this way…when have _any_ of our plans gone _according_ to plan?”

“Not helping,” Steve grumbled, but there was more a smile to ease the sting of the words.

“I only throw ropes to men when they’re down—and this is nowhere near close to being down yet,” he reminded him. The screaming ratcheted up an octave and then there was a man lunging toward them. Deep pits for black eyes, face a mask of dark black veins, and his skin mottled red between the patches. The sound though—that sound wasn’t human.

Double-tap to the creature’s center mass sent it careening backwards. Double-tap to the head exploded the cranium. The body went down. The sound stopped. But the movement…

“Okay, that’s fucking disturbing,” he commented, sliding a couple of small explosives from his pouch to palm. The Soldier didn’t like unexpected behavior from a target. Death twitches were normal.

Death twitches that persisted for several long seconds were not.

The black ichor leaked out of the body and onto the railing. It dripped below, like a fuel spill.

“Buck…”

“Yep,” he replied, lowering the gun and flinging the small explosive toward the puddle forming on the ground. The mini-grenade exploded in a flash of white hot fire, and it took the puddle with it. The body’s twitching stopped. One explosive still in his palm, he had the gun up and they were moving in a two-by-two pattern.

“Stark?” Steve called over comms. “We’re approaching your position.”

“I’ve still got feeds from his HUD,” Natalia told them. “But no audio contact, Friday says his life signs are still in the green zone, but elevated blood pressure, respiration, and pulse. You’ll be on top of him in ten meters. There’s more movement…”

“You don’t say,” Bucky commented, a wry grin pulling at his lips. Zombies. Some days it was hard enough to believe he lived in a future world where men flew in suits, and he had a metal arm, then they threw alien zombies into the mix. Six of them were approaching at a faster clip than the earlier guy.

He tossed a handgun to Steve, then opened fire. Double taps to the chest to knock them down. Take off the head as they fell. He had four down when the shield hooked past him and sheered the other two heads clean off before it rebounded. Bucky rose and stepped aside as he tracked the black ichor dripping off it. Then snatched it with his metal hand before Steve could.

SAW lowered, he tossed the explosive toward the floor where the black puddle was already growing, then pulled a small torch out of another pocket and lit up the ichor staining the shield.

Meeting his best friend’s dry gaze, he tossed him the sanitized shield and said, “Not parking it in isolation for another day.” Despite the semi-cool demeanor, there was nothing cool about Steve at the moment. His temper had been on simmer since Natalia had been hurt—again—, then Bucky telling him and Natalia about Mary Elizabeth had turned up the temperature. Tony’s eavesdropping followed by Natalia putting herself through those damn tests…it was a miracle Steve hadn’t destroyed something yet.

“Fine,” Steve muttered as they fell into step. A fight might help him vent some of the steam. Maybe. As much as Steve worried about him, Bucky had the Soldier, had the familiarity with compartmentalizing and as much as his soul was raw, they had a job to do and Natalia to protect. Until he had more actionable intel, that was all he could do.

That, and keep Steve’s stubborn ass alive and in one piece. Banging echoed ahead and they increased their pace, covering the distance in short form. There were more black ichor painted zombies below hammering on Tony’s armor. He had a shield up, fending them off but he was trapped against even more tanks, nullifying his considerable firepower.

“Don’t miss,” Steve told him unnecessarily as he leapt down to drag them off Tony. He’d fling them away one and two at a time, and Bucky shot them. It was like shot put with zombies. Then Steve was hauling Tony to his feet, and then tossed him upward. Buck caught Tony’s gauntleted hand with his left one. Fucker was heavy in the armor, but he got him up on the catwalk. Then Steve leapt up, catching the edge before he climbed over.

The puddle below was spreading. “We can’t blow it this close to the tank.” It was a guess, but Bucky didn’t want to find out the hard way he was right. Not based on the intelligence they did have.

“Don’t blow…” Tony’s voice crackled over the comms, then electricity sizzled over the surface of his suit, before he grasped Bucky’s arm…oh. Damn inky crap was on his metal fingers and climbing upward. The zap stung like a bitch, but the drops fried, then fell off. Helmet pulling back, Tony continued, “No explosives here. Has Red gotten their cooling systems back online?”

Sweat from the heat around him threatened to drip into Bucky’s eyes and for the first time he missed his old gear—the goggles and face mask. They kept his vision clear and the foul taste in the air out of his lungs.

“Nat?” Steve asked, eyeing the growing puddle below. The armor made him even bulkier, but Bucky had to admit. Knowing he wasn’t bare fisted and bleeding into the face of these things went a long way to settling his concerns about Steve’s hardheadedness.

“No…they have them offline or rerouted out to that refinery…whatever they’re doing it’s out the—”

“Nat?”

Static greeted them and then whole building shook from a detonation outside.

Tony’s helmet slammed into place and he took off, he’d get to her faster, but Steve was already running and Bucky was a half step behind him. He slowed only when he spotted a nitrogen symbol on some piping. Shifting his stance, he changed the magazine in the SAW for armor piercing, and blew a hole in the pipe. Liquid nitrogen burst out with a cloud of vapor and then spread rapidly over the floor.

Satisfied, he raced along the catwalk to catch up to the others.

 

**Clint**

Fortunately, this was one job he didn’t need both legs for. He had the controls and maneuvered the quinjet into a position—a mile out—while Nat slipped out of her seat and back to a computer terminal. “You know…I was thinking,” he told her over his shoulder. “Now that the rest of the team knows…we have the cover we need to get you out to the farm.”

“It’s still not…”

“Laura won’t care.”

“I care,” she said flatly. “I’m not putting your kids in danger.”

He didn’t sigh, but did wish he had a spitball. “You’d never put the kids in danger, that’s my point. They’re still off grid. It’s still quiet. We use the stealth jet, head that way for a couple of days—you get to see the kids…”

“Are we really doing _this_ right now?” The quiet warning in her tone, the absolute lack of emotion did make him sigh.

“I’m worried about you kid.”

“I’m worried about you—you’re focusing on all of us and not on you. You have problems too, or did you think I’d forgotten?” Deflect, and counter attack. Then… “It hurts…okay?” Her voice had gone softer. “It hurts a lot.”

“I know it does,” he soothed. “I knew it from the moment Barnes told me and I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now or how much worse it might get for you.” Because facing the reality of it all, she didn’t _know_ what happened. None of them did, and the only one with the knowledge didn’t have access to it.

She wanted to use the BARF technology. She was willing to risk brain bleeds, nightmarish recalls, and who the hell knew what to expect to find out. Clint wasn’t so sure any of them were ready to face that grab bag of variables, but she didn’t need his reality check just yet. What she needed…

“But name me a time when giving Lila a hug _didn’t_ improve the shit day you were having?” He checked the readouts, and swung the quinjet around.

“Fuck…” She exhaled, then the comm chimed as she switched channels back to the team. “That was the set up they had at Roxxon. Middle terminal should be main control, right and left are balancing for fluid transfer. You want the middle one.”

Clint bit his tongue, tracking movement on the road. Shifting forward in the seat, he studied the flashes he caught through the trees. Coming toward them or away?

“Tony…”

“I see it.” Whatever it was, they were the only two seeing it. Clint kept his attention on watching their backs from the air. Nat needed her focus on task.

“Get me into the system,” she said. “I can work it from here, and you guys get away from those people before they…” Feedback jerked through the whole system and Clint winced.

“What the hell was that?”

“Their power grid is putting off a lot of interference. Can you take us lower?” Her fingers flew over the keys. “He’s fifty meters ahead,” she said into the comms. One of the screens to Clint’s right lit up. Infra-red targeting was just one big hot blur, but the information scoping changed. Movement detectors. Nat was in the building’s security system.

Good girl.

“I’m still getting readings from his HUD—there are at least a dozen infected.”

Clint squared his shoulders as icy fingers of apprehension trailed up his back.

“What the hell…” she murmured, and it didn’t go out on comms. “Friday, is there anyway to confirm these readings?”

“No, Ms. Romanoff, and I’m still trying to reestablish contact with the Boss, I’m getting suit readings, but I can’t get through his comm channels. The interference is not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Gonna try to signal boost you…”

“Thank you.”

More switching the quinjet’s communications array shifted position. “Read me in?” Clint said over his shoulder.

“Electrical discharge interference is scrambling most of the radio signals. Going old school, and seeing if we can find an older AM channel for Friday to use.”

That was smart.

She was guiding Steve and Bucky toward the Stark, but… the movement heading toward them had been tankers. After filling Cap in on the problem, Clint maneuvered them closer. He wanted to keep an eye on both Wanda and Spider-Kid, both of whom were already on the move.

“We’re getting biometric readings…they’re off the charts strange…” Only half-listening to Nat, he frowned at the readings he was getting off the targeting system. Those trucks were also running hot.

“Vision—you need to head to us now,” Clint warned the android. “Those tankers aren’t stable.”

“I am heading your way Agent Barton, please don’t let Wanda engage before I get there.”

Yeah. It was a little late for that. The tankers were already in the air, the red warping the air around them. It took him a moment to spot Spider-Man as he moved onto the tankers directly to loosen the tanks from the cabs. He had the drivers in hand easily.

An alarm went off and he jerked his attention back to the displays. “Brace,” he called. “We have incoming.”

He managed to turn the quinjet to avoid the first missile, but it circled back around, and he had to jerk them up and over. The second slammed into the side of the quinjet. Never had he been so grateful for reinforced shielding, even if they had to sacrifice stealth for it.

Systems sparked behind him, then there was the sound of the fire extinguisher going off. There was a missile hot on their ass. Shielding was down to sixty-eight percent; they could take another hit.

Maybe.

Nat was on her feet behind him as he surveyed the area. Flipping a couple of switches, he redirected power relays to put everything not in their shields to speed.

“You want to target or drive?”

“Drive.” Nat slid into the pilot’s seat, and the controls were out of his hands. He switched, and dropped the rail gun. “Hold on.”

The punch of power sent them straight up, and then she spiraled. Clint concentrated on breathing through his nose as he locked his attention on the targeting computer. Nat’s reflexes were a hell of a lot better than his, she switched directions then flipped them over and dove with the skill that made his stomach think they were on a damn roller coaster.

“In four…three…two…” The throttle slammed back, and she reversed jets as she flipped and the missile was in front of them. He was already firing before she said one. The missile exploded in front of them, and she punched them right through the conflagration and debris before wheeling them back toward the factory.

“Communications are down.” Though she probably already knew it, he focused on getting their comms back up. The static on all channels though was aggravating as hell. Were they being jammed on purpose or was this some kind of side effect?

“Eyes on Wanda?” Nat asked, she had both hands on the throttle and her attention was on the factory as she swung them around.

Clint braced a hand overhead as he pulled himself up and forward to search. There… “She’s got the tankers and Vision has her. They’re on the move.” That was a relief. Vision wouldn’t let anything happen to her and between their abilities they could handle whatever the hell this stuff was.

“Sit!”

He’d barely dropped into the seat and braced himself before they were turning over, and she avoided another missile. She throttled forward just as a red and gold blur burst past the, and then she angled them down and under as Iron Man took out the missile on their ass.

“That is officially old,” Clint grimaced; pain dug into his leg and he carefully fixed the straps on the seat belt to secure himself. He probably shouldn’t have unbuckled in the first place.

Stark hovered up into their view screen, and Clint tapped his ears, then shook his head. Then pointed toward the refinery because he’d caught a flash of where that last missile had come from out of the corner of his eye.

Iron Man gave them a thumbs up, then pointed them away before he darted toward the refinery.

“Sit. Stay. Good dog.” Nat muttered, spinning them around. There were more alarms up on the screen.

“We don’t want to take another hit,” he reminded her. But he shared her impatience. Being out of the action while everyone else was in it frustrated the hell out of him.

“I know,” she switched the balancing on the stabilizers as she turned them around.

“Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes are on the way to help the Boss handle the refinery,” Friday announced over the crackling comms. “I’ve repositioned a satellite to improve the signal bounce. There is a high powered transmitter—likely a satellite dish—beaming a signal. If you can find it, and take it out—that would be ideal.”

Then static interrupted her again.

Nat glanced at him and shook her head. “Alien substance. Explosions. Biometric readings off the charts. Genetic stabilizing matrix…”

“What?”

“Just…none of this makes any sense. What are they trying to do?” She moved them away from the factory, but instead of a wide sweep, she’d done a closer one.

“Nat?”

“What is Peter doing?”

Her gaze was fixed on the viewport and Clint scowled.

The kid as heading back into the factory.

Alone.

“Get comms back up…” Clint said.

“Yeah,” Natasha answered, scrambling out of her seat while Clint took the throttle.

“Alien substance. Tesseract. Gamma signatures. Separation. Explosions. Biometric readings off the charts. Genetic stabilizing matrix…zombies.” Nat repeated the phrases over and over, while behind him she pulled open a paneling and there was the sizzling sound of wires.

Each repetition brought him no closer to understanding what was happening any more than he was…

“Energy resource. Clean energy. Satellite…fuel…” Sparks flew and he spared a glance back before scanning the area again. He didn’t want to go too far…they needed to be in position to get the kid out of there, but the longer this took…

“Radiation… gamma signature… radiation. Genetic stabilizing matrix… _son of a bitch_.” Something slammed, then the radio burst to life. “Wanda—Vision, check your region for a satellite dish and take it down. There’s a high-powered signal that’s being transmitted right now. We need to stop it so we can clear comms.” She gave the orders with smooth authority that demanded obedience and no questions. The channel switched. “Peter…retreat to the quinjet. Right now.”

Another burst of sparks and then the static resumed.

Did the signal go through?

“We’re going to have to do a sweep. I can’t see Stark…and we have no way to know if they need extraction.” Clint didn’t mention Steve or Bucky being there. Nat knew.

She knew every variable.

“Go…” She told him, but her voice had an odd note, and he turned in time to see the motorcycle slotting into the drop chute.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to get Peter. You find the satellite dish. Extract as soon as it’s down.”

“Natasha!”

But she hit the switch and the bike deployed with her on it.

Dammit!

 

**Steve**

 

 

He made it out of the factory just in time to see the quinjet execute a dangerous twist and dive and he almost missed the missile itself until they shot it down. Relief flooded him. She was supposed to be _out_ of the fight on the damn jet. No way she would have agreed to sit it out totally, and he hadn’t even tried the argument with her. They needed her skillset. But stationing her with Clint was supposed to keep her at his side, she’d be more inclined to protect him than hare off on her own.

“Nat?” Steve touched his comms “Clint?”

“They’re good—but we’re just getting static. It’s interfering with Friday, too. She’s trying to lock in a single point-to-point signal.” Tony said, glancing back down at them, then he pointed to the tankers. Wanda had them well in hand. The cabs were on the ground, but there was no evidence of the drivers. They might be unconscious in their cabs. Vision was carrying Wanda much the same way Tony had the last time they tried this. “The tankers are secure, the zombies are down, and the quinjet is fine. We need to find out why all the power and coolant is heading toward the refinery.”

They weren’t done inside the factory. The zombies they’d taken out had leaked the CQ-A or whatever they were calling it. There were also tanks, possibly full of that stuff—who knew?—inside and the temperature in the building was rising to beyond tolerable levels. Steve frowned. “There’s still…”

“No, I took care of it,” Bucky told him. He’d arrived a few steps behind Steve, and his manner was as cool her as it had been when they’d walked into the silo in Siberia when his memory was still in tatters and he was likely more Soldier than Bucky. While it was good to have his friend at his side…nothing about this situation was good. “Shot one of the liquid nitrogen pipes. It flooded the floor and area where the puddle was. It’s deep frozen.” He was reloaded his SAW with a different magazine. “Refinery?” But his gaze tracked to the sky, and Steve turned in time to see another missile arcing over the top of the building they stood in front of and heading straight for the quinjet.

“Tony…”

“On it.” The roar of the repulsors drowned out the words as Iron Man raced right for the jet and the missile. They were already spinning to twist out of the path of the missile when Iron Man appeared in front of them and then the ship adroitly dove under him giving him a clear solution on the missile.

Glancing at Bucky, he said, “Refinery,” at the same time Bucky did and they set off around the building. The armor was bulky, but it moved with him and while he wasn’t used to wearing it, and didn’t care for it long term—it didn’t inhibit his motion too much.

It wasn’t long before Tony passed them, angling toward the refinery and Steve increased his pace. Tony had already gotten into trouble once going in on his own. They still had no idea what was inside the refinery…

As they circled the factory, the stacks of the refinery began to belch out white steam…a lot of it.

“That can’t be good,” Bucky said almost casually, as they reached the first set of broad doors.  A few feet away, a guy with a missile launcher lay flat on his back. Steve didn't need to check him to know he wasn't breathing. Tony hadn’t waited for them, one of the doors was ripped clean off and he was on the ground facing off against…someone not infected.

First piece of good news since Nat had actually been able to sleep.

“You have to stop,” the man was saying. Dressed in a white lab coat, and button down and khakis, he looked every inch the scientist depicted on the Oscorp badge clipped to his coat.

“Dr. Stillwell?” Steve said as he approached.

“Captain America…” The scientist mopped at his sweaty face. He was red and flushed from the heat, and his hair was damp and sticking to his head. “Please, you, Iron Man—all of you, you have to stop.”

“Doctor, you’re playing with dangerous materials…” Tony told him. His helmet had retracted and he looked past the doctor to the interior of the refinery. There was a huge containment tank in the center with metallic gray sides that hid its contents. “Really dangerous _alien_ materials.”

“We know that,” Stillwell told him and Steve frowned as he focused on the doctor. “We figured that out a few years ago when it went active, but we didn’t realize the extent of it and then we had to get the materials back from Roxxon, but the military wanted us to continue our experiments, to find a way to repurpose it…”

“For weapons?” Steve asked. The sound of the equipment was a dull roar, like they were standing next to a waterfall.

“Weapons. Medicines. Serums. They wanted to make more yous, they have for generations. It’s why I went into genetics in the first place.”

Genetics.

Steve scowled, but Bucky focused on the doctor with such laser intensity the man backed up a step. He didn’t get far, Tony caught him in one gauntleted hand.

“Doc, piece of advice. Tell us everything, and save the long explanations. Facts. Now. What are you doing?”

“Recombining it—undoing what was done to him.”

“Him?” Bucky pushed.

“Yes, him. We think it’s a person or a being of some kind…there’s genetic material involved, that’s how I got on the project and Connors. But when we pushed, they pushed back and we had other projects that took attention…”

Projects that involved Natasha’s tissue. Steve hadn’t missed that part of the material she’d brought back. But he clenched his fist and didn’t close the distance.

“The point is…we were working on a serum—to make more soldiers, using blood serum, it never worked.” Blood serum. Nat’s blood. Steve wanted to punch this guy. She wasn’t a damn commodity. “We couldn’t get it to combine correctly…we had one minor success, but it died and even that research wasn’t enough when the funding went away.” Their funding? The bastards in Russia. It just kept circling back to Hydra and all their damn tentacles infecting everything. Would they  _ever_ be free of them? “But Connors and I got to talking about the CQ-A and D, the material they separated the CQ into…Current Question—stupid name but it was a joke made by the original scientists assigned to the project…”

“Doctor, speed it up.” Tony encouraged him. “Didn’t ask for the history.”

The sound inside the refinery was getting louder.

“It’s a delaying tactic,” Steve said, taking a step toward the building but Bucky stopped him.

“Not until we know what’s going on…spill it doctor or we can start questioning you my way.” That was every bit of a threat, and nothing of Bucky Barnes. The Soldier glared at the doctor and the man went pale under his flush.

“The recombination, what we designed for the serum, we repurposed it—we were able to recombine the elements. Repair the instability in it.”

“So why bring it here?” Tony demanded. “Are you recombining it now?”

“And what happened to your people in the factory?” Steve asked/

“An accident,” Stillwell cried. “It’s hard to keep the stuff cooled enough and contained, and recombinator heats it up no matter what we do…but once we have it all and put it together, it’ll be stable again.”

“And the signal?” Tony asked. “Why are you jamming everything?”

Stillwell went silent, and glanced away.

Before Tony could say another word. Bucky grabbed the man’s thumb and bent it. The bone snapped and Stillwell screamed. “You have 205 other bones. Answer the question.”

“The gamma signature,” the man babbled. “The low levels, it’s not just exposure to the Tesseract, it’s communication, it’s been _calling_ for help. But it can’t get the signal boost it needs. We want to send it home!”

“ET phone home, are you fucking kidding me?” Tony gaped, then there was another rumble and the ground shook. “Did it occur to you that sending it home after its been tortured for decades or sending for an interstellar uber to bring more of them might be a _bad_ idea?”

“We broke it,” Stillwell sobbed. “We did this. We had to fix it. The military just wanted bombs or super soldiers, and Roxxon wanted power…Curt and I just want to fix this…and we hired people to get us the materials, but you intercepted some on the way here and they got greedy because of their lost people…we can _fix_ this. You just have to let us!”

“But you don’t know what it’s going to do—and people have been dying for this stuff. You can’t even stabilize the reaction rate.”

“We don’t have to stabilize it, the reaction is stabilization. We lost coolant a few minutes ago. Curt went to the factory to try and redirect it. But even if it blows the building, once the CQ is recombined it’s not a threat.”

“At least until its ride gets here.” Steve said and he almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Tony—do you believe him?” Steve didn’t know the science. Tony did.

“What are you using for the catalyst?” Tony demanded.

Stillwell jerked against his hold and Bucky broke another finger. Steve wanted to tell him to stop, but it wasn’t in him. They didn’t have time for these games.

The scientist let out another sob as he tried to pull free from Bucky, but he couldn’t break his grip. “The serum…the blood serum we had…we targeted a single protein and combined with _Mycobacterium smegmatis_ type II. The CQ-A and D react positively to it, absorb, and then bind together.”

“Jesus.” Tony glanced behind them toward the quinjet and Steve didn’t have to ask.

Nat’s blood.

Nat’s serum.

The gamma radiation in it…the exposure to the Tesseract and Loki’s scepter. She was the only one that had received a massive dose of it on top of everything else.

“It’ll work…just let us finish.” Stillwell was practically begging.

Bucky glanced at him, and Steve stared at Tony. What the hell was the right answer here?

Suddenly his comm let through a staticky burst…

“Say again,” Steve touched a hand to the unit tucked into his ear as if it would help.

Pop. “…in…” Pop. “…retr…” Pop. “…kid.”

What? C’mon. Something needed to work right. Just one. Damn. Thing.  “Repeat…if you can.”

An explosion ripped through the side of the factory, a plume of smoke belching skyward as metal twisted and stone crumbled. They all jerked and Steve half brought his shield up.

The static reverb dropped abruptly, and Clint shouted into his ear. “Nat is in the factory, she went after the kid.”

Steve’s heart stopped. 


	50. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha has always been ready to make the sacrifice...

**Chapter 50**

**Sacrifice**

**Natasha**

 

Natasha’s back jolted as the bike landed, but she was already accelerating. The electric motorcycle’s engine whined painfully. The damn interference was turning electromagnetic. If there was any kind of serious pulse, the bike was screwed—but more than that—the containment units, the quinjet, possibly Steve’s new suit, Tony’s—and Peter’s. None of those were acceptable outcomes. Clint hadn’t been able to hide his discomfort. The jolting had left his leg hurting—hopefully not further damaged. But the missiles were no longer firing at them, comms were down, Wanda and Vision were dealing with the tankers, and she didn’t have eyes on James, Steve, or Tony. She had to trust they could look after themselves.

Impossible. Wasn’t that what James described she, he, and Steve as? They were the impossible. Peter, however, Peter shouldn’t even be on this mission. Damn sentiment got in the way of logical rational when she agreed to let him participate. However, she had asserted rules. Simple. Straightforward. Rules.

He was to be backup only, so why the hell was he rushing into the factory?

Her mind could and did supply a dozen different reasons. He didn’t know the guys were out of there. The quinjet had come under fire. There was still sludge to contain…

The bike skidded sideways through the factory doors and the engine cut as she caught sight of Peter on an upper catwalk chasing—someone in a white coat? The air slapped her like a hot fist to the head.

Despite Steve’s orders for her to stay on the jet—speaking of breaking the rules—she had armed up fully, including a grappling hook for her gun, and she killed the engine on the bike, put it in park then fired upward.

Machinery hummed at an increasing volume, masking any sounds and she still had nothing but static on her comms. Squeezing the secondary trigger, she held on as it dragged her upward. She rolled onto the catwalk, and raced after Peter as she holstered her weapon. Even yelling after him didn’t snag his attention. A pulse in her back sent a shock skidding up and down her spine with every slap of her foot to the metal grating. The suffocating heat stripped the air from her lungs, and her hair slicked with sweat before she made it halfway to Peter and his quarry.

Bites charged she closed in on them…

“Doctor Connors, this isn’t a safe place for you.”

“You need to get out of here,” the man was yelling, his dirty blond hair drenched with sweat and clinging to his flushed face. “We—” His gaze darted to Peter, but he didn’t slow in his mad dash along the metal catwalk. “We’re trying to send it home.”

“Send what home, Doc?” She was only getting snatches of their words, enough to fill in the blanks, but she slowed when they reached the computer hub. The petrified remains of the infected were scattered below, none burning anymore but still lying in puddles of tainted water.

“The material, Spider-Man. Go back to the city. This will soon be over.”

“Doc I can’t do that,” Peter was trying to plead for reason with the guy. “This whole place is unstable—this temperature? Whew. It’s hotter than gym in summer in here…and that’s _bad_ for equipment…and strange, sludgy stuff.”

“It’s not _sludge,”_ Connors said as he turned and grabbed Peter by his biceps. The guy wasn’t trying to hurt him, at least—he only seemed to be shaking him as if to make a point. “It’s an alien life form, trapped here. We pulled it up from the bottom of the ocean floor and it’s been tortured for decades…we’re sending it home.”

Nothing about those statements were good.

“Doc…no offense, but you sound a little crazy. Just let me get you out of here and the Avengers can figure it out.”

“The Avengers!” The doctor shook his head. “No. They will stop us. They will make it…” His gaze darted past Peter and fixed on her. If it were possible, he blanched under the red suffusing his face. “You!”

“Hey Doc,” she said by way of greeting and closed the distance. Peter leapt at the sound of her voice, but at least he didn’t turn his back on the doctor.

“You stole the material!”

“You’ve been experimenting with a lot of stuff you shouldn’t have been, Doc.” She hadn’t forgotten the gun he pointed at her either. “So let’s get you and Spider-Man out of here and we can talk about it.”

The metal around them began to scream and buckle, and the catwalk trembled. The ground shook—earthquake?

“Spider-Man, we need to go…” Or more specifically, he needed to go. The doctor lunged away from them.

“No! You can’t—you have to let it go home!”

“Doctor Connors,” Peter tried again and he stepped between her and the doc. Dammit Peter. “I know you’re upset. I respect your work, I’ve always respected your work. You and Doctor Stillwell—you push the edges of what can be done…”

Even if they never asked if it _should_ be done, but Nat kept her opinion to herself. The shaking around them increased, and the temperature got hotter. If Peter kept it up, she’d zap him and carry him out over her shoulder. If the doc chose to die that was on him.

“…yes,” Connors said, clinging to the control panel, a terrible sadness in his face. “But we never asked ourselves if we should do it.”

The words arrested her.

“So many things we have done,” Connors admitted. “Tests…experiments…we wanted to make super soldiers. We wanted to save people. To improve their immune systems. When someone handed us a key—we didn’t look too closely at where it came from or what…or what our results might mean.”

“We all make mistakes,” Peter said, edging closer. “It’s what we do after, that counts…do we learn from them? Do we get better? Or do we keep making the same ones?” He sounded a little bit like Tony. Maybe a little bit of what she'd said had gotten through. 

The doctor laughed, but there was no mirth in his smile. “You’re young—the young always have another chance.” Then his gaze lifted to hers. “But you and I, Ms. Romanoff, we know better don’t we? We recognize the blood on our hands, and that what we’ve done cannot be undone.”

“The past can’t be changed.” When she’d told Clint earlier that it hurt, she had been trying to downplay the gaping wound bleeding in her soul. The raw edges cut at her even now. “Nothing we do can bring the past back…we can’t change it. It’s done.”

Spider-Man jerked around to look at her, but she didn’t need his mask off to know the plea he had in his eyes. He wanted to save the doctor, but the doctor didn’t want to be saved. He wanted to finish his mission.

The problem was, she didn’t know if they could let him finish it.

Swallowing, the doctor nodded as he looked at the screens. She moved forward three steps while he was distracted. He didn’t try to access anything, just stared at it as the whole building began to shake. The rattling of the metal catwalks made her teeth ache.

Dammit.

“But we can change today,” she told him. She’d reached Peter now, and at least he wasn’t pulled away. “Doc…what you do here—what you’re doing—it matters.”

“I’m just trying to right a wrong…it has been calling for help. Desperate since the sky opened. Maybe it didn’t call before because it didn’t know it could go home. But now it does.” He turned to face them and the black lines crawling along his neck to his face were left on clear relief.

Oh.

Crap.

“Back up,” she told Peter, and cut an arm in front of him to make sure he understood.

“He’s sick…” Peter said.

“He’s infected,” she told him.

“Yes,” Doctor Connors admitted as he leaned against the computer, his arms were folded as if he were trying to hold himself together. The lines were crawling up his face toward his eyes. “The material—it’s chaos. Genetic material meant for shaping and changing. A child. Trapped. It’s been trying to adapt, but we’re not compatible.”

Horror slithered through her.

“I understand so much more now,” Connors admitted. “I didn’t realize the infection would share with me…would show me who it was, who it has been trying to be. It knows what I’m doing. It knows that we’ve been trying to fix it.”

Another shudder, and there was a screaming whistle ahead. The pressure was cracking the tanks.

“Are all those tanks full of…”

“Yes,” Connors said, glancing over his shoulder. “All of him…here and in the refinery. He understands we’re trying to put him back together.” He touched a hand to his forehead. “But he’s—he’s sick. Our world makes him sick…and…” Connors paused and stared at her as the black bled into his eyes.

Yeah. That was the look she hadn’t wanted to see.

“Back up,” she told Spider-Man.

He caught her arm and retreated a step taking her with him.

Connors stumbled a step away from the computers. “You…I can _feel_ you.”

“Doctor Connors?” Unease creased Peter’s words.

“Yeah, I don’t think the doc is in there anymore,” she warned him and edged him back another step as the doctor shambled forward, catching himself on the railing when the shaking would have knocked him over.

A horrific wrenching of metal screamed ahead.

Shit.

“Off the catwalk,” she ordered as an explosion ripped upward. One of the tanks flew across the floor, crashing through metal supports and the catwalk they were on began to buckle.

The heat billowed, the temperature climbing. Breathing the air was almost impossible. So she sucked in as much as she could, then held her breath as she caught Peter as the walk gave. Her hand latched to his as she latched onto the hot metal. He pointed away and fired the webbing and as soon as he tugged it, she let go and it was his turn to catch her as they swung.

All around them metal screamed and collapsed, and then fire rushed at them like it had been fed a backdraft. They hit the floor as the flames whooshed over them and she did her best to cover Peter even as the heat scorched her through the suit. Her tact suit could take a beating, and it insulated her against the environment, and for the most part—fireproof.

Just not fire retardant.

As the blast of fire retreated, she rolled off Peter and rolled from side to side to get the flames out. Peter jerked his head up, looked at her, then upward at the catwalk. “We have to get the doctor.”

“No,” she told him. “We _don’t_. He’s infected Peter…” It was enough to get the words out. The air was better down here, but that wasn’t saying much when it reeked of chemicals, singed hair, and burnt ozone.

“But he’s still alive.”

“There’s no cure,” she said, grabbed his arm and yanking it down before he could fire another web. “He made his choice. You heard him. But we can’t save him and going back only puts you in more danger.”

More metal rained down around them. The walls were buckling. The tanks were cracked open. Fire burned and…

…black oozed along the floor toward them like a pool of blood rushing in with the tide.

“Up,” she told him, changing plans abruptly. Peter whirled, fired upward and locked am arm around her. The jerk pulled at her back again and she blinked away the wrench. What had Cho said about her constantly injuring herself? Sure—why not? She always recovered? What was the point of her if she didn’t take risks?

Already she swiveled her head, looking for a way out. Peter glanced at the catwalks. But she shook her head. They weren’t stable. The black puddle was all over the floor below them and…fuck was it rising?

_“I’m talking about the reckless idiot who broke into Oscorp, stole CQ-A and walked out, knowing full well that stuff reacts to you.”_

The stuff was reacting to her.

“Peter let me go.”

“What?” He jerked his head to her as his voice climbed an octave.

She worked her gun out of her holster and checked the grappling hook. “That stuff is coming for me, not you—go. I’ll be okay.”

There wasn’t quite enough line to reach the ceiling, but she could reach one of the catwalks and from there…maybe climb.

“I’m not leaving you.” Peter locked his arm, and it was like an iron band around her. She’d have to break him to break it. “We go together…” Then he glanced from the rising, surging ooze now throwing up arcs of black inky substance as if they were arms, then to where they’d been and she caught sight of Connors.

Well, he was still alive—even if he wasn’t all together human.

“We need you,” he yelled.

“No, not creepy at all…” Peter said, then shifted. They dropped a second as he let go of the webbing then fired and they were swinging away. They made it three feet—three miserable feet when something latched onto him and he went lower. “No…”

“Dammit, Peter.”

He twisted, firing another web, then slapping it against her and she rebounded upward as he fell.

No, as he was yanked and then he vanished right into the black maw of the rising ooze. There was so much of it, bubbling and writhing and…

Gun ready, she slid out her knife and sawing through the webbing—impossibly tough material—before free falling toward the material—the thing reaching for her. The thing had swallowed Peter. She was trained in observation, to see everything around her. She noticed things…the way a man’s eyes would dilate when something pleasing surprised him, how the hair on their arms would begin to rise if something gripped them, how the air changed, grew more electric when she shared that connection.

She’d noticed things about the sludge, too. She’d noticed the way it surged, desperate to get to her. She’d noticed the way the cubed—or the whole form—had not reacted in violence, but in reflecting or mirroring to her. Mirroring, a form of connection and communication, and vital to seduction or infiltration—how often had she used a similar technique with her body language and verbal cues?

Beyond all of those things, it was the comments from Hagen, from the research from Greenland, from the project manager who reached out to Tony, from Steve, and Tony—from Connors—and what she’d seen at Roxxon…

The sludge wasn’t just a thing or material. It had sentience. It possessed some kind of awareness.

They’d carved away what made it whoever or whatever it had been. They’d hollowed it out. Experimented on it. Pulled it to pieces. Unmade…and now Connors and his ilk wanted to remake it.

Of anyone, she knew exactly what it had experienced. The pain. The loss of identity. The tortured memories left behind.

It needed her for whatever it was trying to do _“It has been calling for help. Desperate—since the sky opened. Maybe it didn’t call before because it didn’t know it could go home. But now it does.”_

She fired the grappling hook just as she touched the surface of the sludge, and the tension of it solidified, bending around her like a cradle, slowing her descent and cushioning it.

Somewhere else, another explosion added to the rising cacophony. Repulsors whined. Voices shouted. Movement flickered at the edge of her vision. Damn. Not something she wanted any of them to see. But as the sludge wrapped around her, she pressed past the tension, and locked her hand on Peter’s. He was in a suit. She had to hope…

Hope.

Fucking hope, and she had it.

Finally.

His hand closed on hers, then she shoved the gun into it and flipped a cuff over his hand so he couldn't lose his grip. She was sinking. The world had slowed down, almost passing in micro-beats. She hit the switch to retract and the line went taut and gradually he was pulling upward and past her.

Ha.

Score one for Black Widow.

They weren’t taking Spider-Man today, and then the black swarmed over her as she sucked in a last breath.

Falling.

She was falling.

Her lungs burned but she held her breath, not fighting as she sank—fell—drifted? The world around her was perfectly dark, no light invaded it—kind of like a sensory deprivation tank. No sound. No light. Nothing. She was barely aware of her self, and yet utterly aware of everything. It was everything. Nothing.

Light flashed.

Crackled.

Jagged bolts, like lightning breaking up the dark.

Then…

_“Agent Romanoff. Captain Rogers.” Phil smiled. He had to be delighted, hanging out with his hero. She’d seen the card collection._

_“Ma’am,” Rogers greeted her with absolute politeness. He was more reserved now than when he woke up in the facility in New York. There he’d been out of sorts, disoriented, and then angry._

_Justifiably so._

_“They need you on the bridge. Face time.” She told Coulson. They wanted him to run the face trace to find Loki—to find Clint. He nodded to her, but she didn’t miss the quick glance he threw at Rogers. Yes, he had work to do, no he didn’t want to leave the Captain._

_It was almost…cute._

_Steve fell into step with her or maybe she fell into step with him as they walked toward the railing. It was the first time…the first time they’d sync’d up their paces and it had been so easy._

_“There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?_

_“Trading cards?” Steve frowned. Poor guy. How much could he have acclimated to the world he’d woken up._

_“They’re vintage,” she told him. “He’s very proud.” There was Banner. He’d been lingering on the deck since they arrived and she hadn’t been in a hurry to be in close quarters with him again. Especially with him twitching so damn nervously about everything._

_“Dr. Banner,” Steve said quickening his pace and offering his hand. Banner shook it with bemusement._

_“Oh. Yeah. Hi. They told me you’d be coming.” He glanced at her. Yes, she was they, then he looked back at Steve. Must be weird to be looking into the face of what you were trying to do before it all went so horribly wrong._

_Sympathy crawled out of a shadowed corner to peek at the pair. Both of them so lost in the middle of the SHIELD operation. It was bound to get much worse, too. Could they handle it?_

_“Word is you can find the cube,” Steve was saying._

_Banner shot her another nervous look. “is that the only word on me?”_

_“Only word I care about.” Damn if she didn’t believe him._

_With a slow nod, it took Banner a beat to absorb the sentiment. “Must be strange for you, all of this...” He motioned to the active hellicarrier preparing for liftoff._

_“Well this,” Steve said with almost a smile, and it was the first hint of one she’d seen on his face. “This is actually kind of familiar.”_

_A part of her wanted to linger, to let them keep talking, to explore what they would pull out of each other. But the technicians were starting to grab their oxygen masks._

_“Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside a minute. It’s gonna get a little hard to believe.” The deck began to shake as the rotor engines began their deployment._

_“Is this a submarine?” Steve frowned. Nothing about the place suggested submarine, perhaps why he had so much doubt in his voice._

_“Really?” Banner’s skepticism edged his words. “They want me submerged in a pressurized metal container?”_

_Instead of waiting for her to answer, they moved toward the edge where the engines rotation was visible and the hellicarrier began to lift off from the water._

_“Oh, no,” Banner half-laughed. “This is_ much _worse.”_

 

The hellicarrier faded, then they were in the ops center. Bruce discussed his algorithm. They flashed into his lab. Loki’s scepter…and the argument. Bruce holding the scepter before snapping out of it. The explosion. Falling and the pain ripping through her ankle as a metal strut landed on her. Bruce transforming. Running. The hit. Then fighting Clint—it was like reliving her memories in fast forward. Coulson’s death. Going after Loki in New York—he had his scepter again and the cube…

The portal opening. The race through the battle, leaping from Steve’s shield onto the Chitauri skif, and then tumbling finally onto the roof of Stark Tower.

 _“You can’t…fight against yourself.”_ Doctor Selvig. The scepter. The cube.

_“I can close it…can anyone hear me?”_

Then the moment she shoved the scepter through the field, the moment time stopped. Everything halted and then something took shape in the darkness, the formless, took form. It had—soft, indistinct features, and it was hard to make out in the absence of light or was there light?

Was she even breathing?

“Hel—lo…” The mouth shaping the words paused, then tried again. “A—gent…Rom—an—ov.”

Okay. That was different. She moved, sat up? Maybe? She couldn’t quite get the feel for where her body was. Was she standing? Sitting? Lying prone? It didn’t matter, she faced the—formless face. “Hey.”

“ _Privet. Ty predpochitayesh' russkiy_?” The Russian was worse than the English and she didn’t want to know how it learned the language.

“English is fine,” she told it, tilting her head. It was hard to get a read on body language and facial expressions when it had none.

The image of her pressing Loki’s scepter into the Tesseract device and shutting down the portal flashed across her eyes.

“Yes. I did that.”

Another flash and she was on an unstable surface…

 

_“_ _You don’t give up, do you?” A man with a fierce red skull for a face—Johann Schmidt—was saying._

_“Nope.” Oh. She knew that voice, she turned—or tried to but could only catch his motion from the corner of her eye. Steve slammed into Schmidt. Fists. Shield. Kicks. Blocks. He was a power house of motion but Schmidt matched him blow for blow._

_“You could have the power of the gods! Yet you wear a flag on your chest and think you fight a battle of nations! I have seen the future, Captain! There are no flags!” Schmidt declared, mania in his eyes. Fanatics were always the worst._

_“Not my future!” He flung his shield. How many times had she seen that same action? How many times had she sheltered under it, or caught it to use herself? Hell, she’d rescued it from the street and returned it to him first. The shield—it was a friend in some ways—was far more than a symbol. It was an extension of Steve._

_The shield slammed into Schmidt and he collided with her. Fuck that hurt. What the hell was he doing? “What have you done?” Schmidt jerked her upward and the world burned around her and began to transform, a window opened and she tumbled through at the same time he flung upward and then cube bounced, raw heat burning through the metal and then she tumbled toward the sea._

_At the last moment, she twisted, turning so she could see the Valkyrie—the massive plane and her heart twisted. Steve was about to go into the ice. She could do—nothing._

_And she sank, the water rushed over her and the cold—the cold encased her and her mind flashed to the cryo tubes, the metal coffin closing around James as he locked into place, and she could do nothing. He was—he was standing in the cryo chamber and she was sitting in the chair. She couldn't save them. But she wanted to, damn she wanted to so much. The world was about to change—again. It was over. Pain sparked through her, then everything went to ice._

 

The formless face came back to her and stared at her. What—what was she supposed to get from that? Her work with the cube closing the portal. Then—the Valkyrie and Schmidt…hell Schmidt opened a portal. But how did…

“You were here already.”

“Yes…”

“Attached to the cube?”

“Trapped.”

The words were hard for it to make or maybe just hard for her to hear. It took air to make words and there was no air, just—endless black and the formless face. The lack of familiarity with it all should have spiked her adrenaline, sent her into fight or flight, but too many years of training to suppress those reactions so she could act, not react kept her calm.

The sludge—thing—whatever the hell it was? “Do you have a name?”

“Name?” Puzzlement rippled around her.

“What are you called?”

Nothing.

Okay, it was worth a shot.

“You were trapped in the cube? On the cube?”

“With—” The formless answered. “With the cube. Experiments. Activation. Slipped…tripped?”

Oh. Fuck. “The Hydra experiments with the cube opened something and you fell in?” Because really, even the shit those guys did by accident had to be horrible.

“Yes.” The formless face tried to smile, and yeah. It wasn’t working for it.

“Do you know where you come from?”

“Yes!” Another smile, and then the blackness changed and they were in the stars, a red nebula scattered across the middle as they plunged toward it like a star falling into the gases and there was—a world. A huge, dark world and they stood on a rocky ledge looking out over the barren landscape but it wasn’t…it was beautiful. The sky was almost purple, and the stars were visible. It was different…not cold. Not hot. Just…waiting. Like it was on the edge.

“Young,” the formless told her. “Old.” Then her view shifted upward, as if she were on her back. Stars, galaxies…nebulae scrawled across the sky. “In between.”

“The world is a gateway.”

“Yes.”

Well. Crap… “Can you go back?” She grimaced, then concentrated on the memory of sending Thor and Loki home with the cube. They were in Central Park, not far from the Tower, because they needed to have a wide-open space. Loki, muzzled, but far from humbled. Those variable eyes seemed almost green as he shot a look toward her. Clint was stiff at her side, it probably took everything he had not to lash out and try to kill him.

Thor understood his crimes, but he wanted to take his brother home. As long as Thor guaranteed Loki would never return, the powers that be didn’t offer up much argument. Clint—Clint kept biting his tongue. Natasha figured out a half-dozen ways to off the Asgardian, but she reserved the action because Clint told her to let it go.

“Do you think they spank on Asgard?” She’d asked Clint, her voice quiet at his ear. “It's kind of fun to imagine what Daddy dearest is gonna do to him, y'know?”

A smile creased Clint’s face. A real one. But then she faced the brothers again. Thor nodded to them all as he made Loki take hold of the device, then he twisted it and they blurred out of existence, disappearing skyward or to Asgard or whatever. But the cube was gone with them.

“Yes,” the formless said, and she was in the black unending again, and it extended a hand, to point at her. “Power. You.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “How?” Because what else was she going to say. It had been hurt… images of the metal gurneys, the blue liquid infusions, the cutting, the stabbing, the beatings…breaking bones and timing how long it took them to heal.

Fighting in the training rooms.

Missions.

Dancing. Dancing until her toes bled and her muscles trembled, then still dancing. Never stopping, even as she left bloody toe prints on the floor. Don’t fail. Failure wasn’t an option.

“Got it…” She said, and sucked in a trial breath. She could breathe. Somehow. “You need the radiation.”

“Yes. Gather. Travel. Leave.”

“You want to go home.”

“Yes.”

Natasha nodded slowly. “Okay…” She wouldn’t stand in there way and if she could help. “You can’t hurt anyone else.”

“Not hurting.” An image of fleeing flooded her mind. Explosions, then crashing together with the rest of itself, before rushing into the snowy woods, fleeing. Pursuit. But they were away. They had moments. Perhaps longer. She glanced upward as the black unswirled and she was standing in a clearing. It was night.

Oh. Fuck. Night. How long had they been fleeing?

“Time…linear. Hard to adapt.”

“Okay.” She didn’t need to know. “Thank you for asking,” she told the formless as an outline of a body melted out of the dark and then the formless had something of a form, and eyes that gazed at her from the darkness.

“Taking wrong. You will…suffer.”

What else was new? “Will I die?” Because if they could stop the spread of this stuff, the weaponizing, save people and save this creature that had been trapped one Earth all these years—the math was simple. There were worse ways to go. She’d always been prepared to die…except…she wanted to go home, too.

To Steve.

To James.

To the Tower.

To the Team.

Clint.

Tony.

Peter.

Wanda.

Hell…Lila and Coop and Nate.

Laura.

Sam.

Rhodey.

Vision.

And somewhere…somewhere out there, Mary Elizabeth. The name rested within her like an unshaped gem. Beneath the layers was something precious but she couldn’t visualize it yet. Hidden away, disconnected in her damaged brain. A pain she couldn’t define and had no defenses against no matter how she tried to compartmentalize it.

She’d always been _prepared_ to die.

But she didn’t _want_ to die.

That… that was different.

“We don’t want to kill.” We. It said we, not I. But okay. Maybe it was more than one. Who was she to judge? “You will help?”

“Yes,” she said, glancing up at the sky again. She was standing in a cone of the sludge, but it was—almost beautiful. Iridescent under the moonlight, shimmering as it flowed, around her. The figure made another smile. Then it extended a hand to her.

This was it… _Really sorry if I fuck this up guys._

Regret pulled at her.

Hesitance.

The one thing that would matter more than the mission.

Love was for children because only children got to believe in tomorrow.

But she’d never been allowed to be a child. Now… now she got to choose. To care. To be attached. To build a home… she got to decide.

She would stilll help, and if it hurt—it hurt. Pain could be overcome. She could survive pain. But she was going to live if she had anything to say about it.

She had too much to do…

_“The ceremony is important for you to take your place in this world.”_

Deep breath, then she reached over and clasped the being’s hand and the world turned inside out.

_“I have no place in this world.”_

 

_“You should have given me a head’s up Red, so I could watch out for your reckless ass,” Tony told her, hands in his pockets. His expression a mask of fury, but his eyes were so sad. “You don’t get to do this…I refuse to let you slip away like this. Not now.”_

_“Oh, come on!” Clint taunted her, scowling. He never let up on her, not when he believed he was right. “You’re a fighter…I know you. It’s like you’re not even trying. C’mon, kid, give it to me. What’s the point of training if you hold back? Fight dammit.”_

 

_“You aren’t invincible, Natalia. You are—brilliant, wild, fierce, and so beautiful it hurts me to look at you sometimes. But you aren’t invincible. You cannot be so careless with your life.” James, no, her Soldier—both, stared at her, trapping her in his cool gaze demanding she listen to him.“You have…you have to survive…you know this, don’t you? I—you just have to survive.”_

_Steve stared at her, reproach in his eyes. He was slamming his fist against the wall. “You’re supposed to be my home, Angel. You can’t go. Do you hear me? You can’t. A home isn’t a place, it’s people and I just found you. You don’t get to go…”_

It hurt. Her whole body was on fire and it felt like her soul was being torn away, but she didn’t scream. Pain could be overcome. She would endure. Then she slipped away as the world twisted.

 

_The sound stopped. The tempest eased. The air was cold. She hurt, God she hurt so bad, she was splitting open—and then a baby cried…the sob tore at her and she tried to sit up. She had to see…_

Pain consumed her, ripping the memory away before she could and a scream clawed its way upward. No, she wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t give in. Pain could be overcome. She would survive.

The world turned to light, and she tilted her head back as the energy swarmed upward, blurring and then like a star falling she drifted back to earth. Lying there against the cold dirt, she stared up at the sky. It had gotten darker—the fluttering lights were gone and the world was quiet. A breeze rustled the trees, and the bushes. She was so tired.

So. Very.

Tired.

“Natasha!” A voice called through the darkness. They’d been talking to her. Steve and James.

She blinked.

“Natalia!” It sounded so far away, like the breeze carried it over to tease her with it.

A rush of feet. A hum of repulsors.

Then a slam against the earth, and knees hitting the ground. She tilted her head and looked up to find Tony staring down at her.

Huh.

That was different.

“I got her,” he said touching a hand to his ear, then he rattled off some coordinates. “She’s…she’s awake. You’re awake, right Red? They’re coming.” He touched a hand to her cheek, he must have let the metal glove slide away. Then his hand went to her pulse. She blinked and he jerked. “Fuck…yes, she’s awake, beat to hell, but here…” Then to her. “I’m going to scan you, okay?”

Sure.

Why not? What did she care?

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was floating…no…the hard thump of a heartbeat beneath her ear. Not floating. Being carried.

Steve glanced down and he stared at her, his expression so fierce and worn. It was tearing him up. She wanted to tell him she was okay. She’d be fine. But her eyes fell closed before the words could come out.

The next time she opened them, she was lying in a bed, and machines hummed around her. Cho was in the room…

“It’s not a coma,” she was saying. Oh, she mustn’t be alone. “Her blood work is normal—well normal for her. Her injuries seem superficial even if they aren’t healing. Her brain activity…” Here she hesitated.

“What?” James demanded and his voice was harsh, unforgiving.

“It’s…it’s there. But it’s all low waves, deep delta waves like she’s transitioning into the deepest levels of sleep, but she doesn’t quite sink nor rise…”

But she was awake, she could hear them. What the hell?

“Right now, I think rest and fluids are the best things for her, I can’t begin to understand what happened to her.” Dr. Cho really sounded stumped and Nat almost felt sorry for her.

“Still no signs of infection?” Tony asked, his tone wasn’t terse or angry, it was just—resigned.

“I said her blood work is normal. The only significant find is the low frequency radiation we detected doesn’t seem to be there anymore or it’s so low it’s not reading at all.”

Where was Steve?

But she slipped back into darkness even as she tried to hang on.

“You do know it’s getting really fucking boring talking to you right?” Clint was there the next time she surfaced. “You’re just lying still, no expressions, not even cracking a smile at my best jokes.” Weariness accompanied the words. “I sent Rogers to take a shower. Barnes went with him to make sure he did it. He hasn’t left your side, Nat. It takes me and Barnes both to get him to even eat…” He sighed. “Barnes is pretending like he’s okay, but he’s not. It’s all an act, you can see the rage vibrating under his skin—as long as he has Steve to look after, he can sublimate it. But you need to get off your ass and wake up. I told you keeping them even is your job and I’d help, not do it all.”

She needed to wake up. He was right, but she was still tired. When Steve and James came back, she’d wake up then.

“Look,” Tony was saying. “I know I’m an arrogant guy. I know I stepped over the line…and I shouldn’t have done it. You can wake up and rip me a new one. I'd be so good with that. You know, I'm not excusing it but I thought…we’re getting to be better friends. You’re relaxing around me again. I earned some of your trust that I threw away before. I know it’s not my place, I get that you picked them, and I’m okay with it…or maybe I’m not, but I will be okay with it.”

His breathing harshened, and then he sniffed and there was a thickness when he spoke next. “I need my friend back—the woman who keeps me not even a little bit humble, who dares me to be a better person, who…who I’d put center stage in my life in a heartbeat if you’d let me. I’d tackle whatever the hell it is you’re in right now if I could. I need you to come back, Red. Open your eyes, okay? Just open them and look at me, like you did in the field.”

They weren’t open?

That was annoying.

He slid his thumb down her cheek. “C’mon, wake up and break my hand because I’m not supposed to be touching you. If Rogers catches me, he definitely will…”

Steve was gone again. Why didn’t she wake up when Steve was there? She’d heard James once. But she wanted to see them. To hear them.

A phone rang, and the touch against her face disappeared. “Fuck.” Then a snap and he said, “What?”

Silence.

“They’ll have to wait to schedule it…I don’t care, they aren’t going to show up. Give it a week or two. But definitely not today.” Then he slammed the phone down.

Something was wrong. The agitation in his voice scraped over her. Impatience with her ability to open her eyes flooded her.

“What’s up?” Steve! “And keep it down, getting yelled at isn’t how to wake her up.”

“Might work,” James commented, his voice dry. “Nothing else we’ve done has worked.”

“Cho came up earlier, no changes,” Tony said. “Just—she’s sleeping.”

“I know.” Steve was closer, then metal fingers closed around hers. James. They were right there. “I talked to her. She sends me hourly updates.”

“Boss,” Friday intruded. “Mr. Parker is here.”

Steve sighed. “I should talk to him.”

“Yep,” James said. “You tore into him pretty good.”

“But he’s fine,” Tony said, surprising her. Why the hell had Steve torn into Peter? “He’s just concerned about her, and working on doing the lessons she left for him.”

“He shouldn’t have gone into the factory…” Steve said. “If he hadn’t, then maybe…”

“Maybe Natalia would have stayed on the quinjet?” James sounded like he was smirking. “Natalia is a force of nature, Stevie. She will do what she needs to. If she hadn’t gone after Spider-Punk, it might have been someone else…she doesn’t know how to stand down.”

“I know.” Aggrieved, Steve had moved, he was seated next to her, the bed dipped, and his hands were warm on hers. They were each holding a hand now. “It’s frustrating as hell.”

“You know…if it weren’t killing me that it's Natalia, I’d call it karmic justice for you,” James said. “Now you know how I feel…except now I have to deal with it in both of you.”

Tony chuckled.

“What?” Steve asked.

“It’s funny…we’re all standing around, wringing our hands and begging her to wake up.” He made no bones about those facts. “And everything she wanted to happen, has happened and we’re not doing a damn thing about it.”

“Not everything,” James said, and her heart squeezed. What had she wanted anyway? The team back together. They were. Peter safe? She’d gotten him out of the…

Oh, the formless. She’d been drained. It needed the residual radiation to go home. It must have worked. A kind of wonder unfolded within her. There had been pain, she’d been in hell, but then it was over and they were gone and they’d found her.

She really needed to open her eyes.

“They want to schedule the ceremony for your pardon,” Tony was saying. “It’s all official, and signed on the dotted line but everyone feels like a public ceremony will cement it. Remind people you’re a hero.”

“I don’t care,” James said. He never had, not really. All he wanted was to be left alone and she’d gone rushing back into the fight and he’d gone right behind her—well behind Steve. But Steve wasn’t retiring anytime soon. “Did they pardon her?”

“No,” Tony admitted. “But they’ve dropped the charges, and the prosecution…quietly across the board.”

What?

“So that’s it, she’s no longer a fugitive?” Hope lit James’ voice.

“No…she isn't...” Tony trailed off.

“But they aren’t clearing her either,” Steve said, and tension strung out his voice. “The smear campaign, all the things they said about her on the news, all the charges and evidence they put on display to paint her as the bad guy, they aren’t taking that back either.”

Oh it didn’t matter…

“She won’t care,” James said. “She cares about being on the team. About her freedom.”

“I care,” Steve said, the anger lacing those two words punched at her. They needed her, and she couldn’t keep lying here listening.

Okay. Enough. She had to wake up.

Wake up.

Open her damn eyes.

The light blinded her, and stung… “Steve…”

“Nat?”

“Natalia?”

“Hey…” Was that croak her voice? Then she was wrapped up in arms and she didn’t care. Weak as a kitten with muscles like jelly and she just held onto them and let them hold her.

She was awake. They were there.

She was home.

 

 

_A week later…_

 

 

“Hey…” Steve called as he jogged toward her. He’d gone out for a run on the beach, and she’d slipped out to sit on one of the loungers in the sun. A big floppy hat kept her face in the shade because she’d prefer not to freckle, thank you. She’d added sunscreen, and James had gone down to make iced coffee for her—even if he labeled it sacrilege.

They were somewhere in the Caribbean on an island that Tony _owned_ because…Tony. Out of New York, and away from the cold. They were going back in a couple of days, but the guys had all declared a long weekend would be good for her. James and Steve had decided unilaterally that they were using her recuperation time for a first vacation. She still slept a lot, but her strength was returning and every day she felt a little more like her. She might hit the gym tomorrow, she needed to recover any muscle mass she'd lost.

Despite the numerous questions, she hadn’t really talked about what happened, except to say that it asked for her help and she couldn’t tell it no.

“Hey,” she said, smiling as he slowed from his run and came to sit on the edge of the lounger. “You’re all sweaty.”

“Yeah,” he told her, a real grin on his face. He’d shaved his beard and she’d been a little disappointed, but he promised to grow it back out for her later. He wanted to feel the sun on his whole face. She’d cut her hair, too. It had been singed, so she’d lost a few inches and added a few layers. Even James had trimmed his hair, but kept it longer in the back. “Ran around the island…it was nice.”

Raising a hand, she brushed her fingers down his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

His expression shifted as he caught her hand, then kissed her fingers. “For what?”

“For almost leaving…”

His face froze and the pain in his eyes gutted her. Behind him, James appeared carrying the coffees and a bottle of water under one arm—probably for Steve. His face was a controlled mask. He’d probably heard her, too.

Glancing at him, she held out her other hand and he set the drinks down before coming to rest on the other side of the lounger.

“I—I had to go after Peter,” she told them. “I knew it was dangerous, and I knew how unstable the bio organic material was, but I couldn’t let Peter go in there alone. Not with comms down and everything going sideways. I want to tell you I’m sorry I took that risk, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that. Then when everything happened, it was happening so fast. But I knew what to do, I knew what I _had_ to do.”

She met Steve’s gaze, and he nodded. “I’d have saved the kid, too.”

James sighed, and pressed a kiss to her palm. “We all would have.”

“Then…when I fell into the stuff, when it reacted to me…” They tensed, and she pressed forward. She hadn’t talked about this. It was so hard to put into words. Everything about it had been…fantastical and otherworldly, and then grounded in the worst parts of her existence all at once. “I…I wasn’t afraid. I tried to puzzle my way through it. It wanted to talk to me. Communicating with it was…bizarre. It reminded me of the day we met on the hellicarrier. And everything that happened with the Tesseract. Then I think it showed me what happened on the Valkyrie.”

Steve frowned. “What?”

“I can’t explain it…I saw the fight between you and Red Skull. I saw you hit him with the shield and he fell into the cube casing, then he grabbed the cube and it…transported him somewhere else…that was when the formless…”

“Formless?” James asked, as he pushed his sunglasses up.

“It didn’t have a name. It knew mine…I think it could translate electrical impulses…maybe it connected to my mind, I really don’t want to think about that part too hard.” Not even a little bit. Too close to the parts of their lives they’d had no control over. “But it knew me, it knew what I had done and what I’d been exposed to. And it wanted me to know how it got here, and what it wanted… They’d tortured it, and unmade it, and tried to remake it…they even used parts of me on it.”

Steve rubbed a slow circle against her palm with his thumb. “We know.” All the rage in him seemed to drain away. “We know, Angel. Stillwell confessed everything… ”

“I had to help, if I could help it get home… It showed me…it was like being in the stars and then another world. It was—I don’t even have words for it. But I won’t lie, I knew…I knew there was a chance I might die.”

Their grips on her tightened, but she pressed forward. They needed to hear this, and she needed to say it.

“All my life… dying has never been something I was afraid of. Everyone dies. My training says nothing is more important than the mission. Nothing.” She scraped her teeth over her upper lip. “But this time…even knowing that it could happen and accepting the risk…I didn’t want to die. I really didn’t want to leave you two…or the team…or Clint and his family…not when I just found my home.”

She glanced from Steve to James, then squeezed their hands.

“I want to live…I want to make a place in this world. With you.” She exhaled shakily. “I want _us_ to make a place in this world. So I’m sorry that I scared you, and I’m sorry that it came so close to me not being here…I’m going to work on that, okay?”

There were tears on Steve’s cheeks, but his smile was blinding and James’ grin was so open and free it took her breath away. “That’s all I ever wanted,” Steve told her, and James chuckled.

“Well, I’m pretty sure we want the whole package, but you won’t hear me complain, doll. You deserve everything…we’ll find a way to give it to you.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “We will.” He cupped her face and kissed her, slow, sweet and full of promise. When he released her, James slid his hand around her nape, and gave her a kiss, this one wet, hot, and definitely asking for more, but he broke it gently and pressed his forehead to hers.

They’d both been so damn careful with her since she woke. Treating her like she was made of glass, and she’d let them. For a little while. They’d needed it, and if she were wholly honest, a part of her needed it too. But she was getting stronger, and it was time to push—a little.

“As much as it pains me to say this,” James admitted while Steve actually laughed at him. Nat pulled away slightly to look from one to the other. “We need to put a pin in this beautiful moment that I would love to have _hours_ explore.”

For once, Steve’s face didn’t heat but his eyes certainly did and she grinned at him. “Hours?” She checked with him.

He nodded slowly. “Hours. Plenty of time to trade you back and forth and make sure you knew exactly how much we need you and want you to be here, too.”

Okay, that sent a shiver through her whole body.

Then Steve gave her a shy grin. “You said there were things you wanted to do…” And they were willing to do them.

Damn. “And we have to put a pin in it, why?” She glanced at James, and he sighed, then moved away to adjust himself. Long tank and shorts didn’t do much to disguise the heavy weight of his erection, but damn she didn’t mind the view.

She was alive after all and part of living was enjoying.

“Cause we have a surprise for you,” Steve admitted, with a glance at James. “It’s ready, right?”

“Yep, was going to make the announcement when I came up, but Natalia just bowled us over instead.”

She laughed. “You needed to hear me say the words, zvezda moya y solntse moya. You deserve so much more.”

“Well, we have everything we want—we have you.” Steve reminded her, then kissed her knuckles as he too stood. They both retreated a few steps. And her eyes narrowed. What were they up to?

James whistled, and there was a sound of a door opening and she twisted in the seat to see Clint standing there with a dry look on his face before there was a shout and a streak raced toward her.

“Auntie Nat! Auntie Nat!”

Natasha let out a little wet laugh and then she had her arms full of Lila and Cooper, and even little Nate after he toddled at speed after his siblings. Glancing over their heads, she grinned at her guys and then snuggled the kids to her. The ache in her was still there. The hurt. But so was the quiet joy and the sense of belonging. It was—if not perfect—then the closest to it she’d ever been.

Steve and James.

Clint and his family.

When they got back to New York, she’d get back to training Peter and Wanda. Apparently, she had her spot back on the team. The committee wasn’t going to fight them—she hoped. Tony…Tony was there and they still needed to have a long talk, but he’d never given up on her and she hadn’t forgotten what he said.

Lila tugged at her hair as she leaned away and filled her in on everything. Nat listened, soaking up the words and chuckled when she only paused to let Cooper say something.

Over Lila’s head, she locked eyes with James. He wore an expression that was equal parts adoration and grief. That pain was something they shared, and she gave him a small smile as Steve gripped his shoulder. That loss was in the center of them, something to be addressed in the future. They had time.

“Tell me you brought suits,” she said to Lila and the little girl bobbed her head. “Well then let’s go get you all changed, and we can go play in the water.”

They scampered off and Clint hurried after. Laura waved from the doorway and Nat couldn’t stop her smile from stretching her cheeks.

Yes, it still hurt.

But she had joy. And maybe Madame B had been right, maybe she hadn’t had a place in the world.

But she could damn well make one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends Knives in the Heart. I can't believe it blew past so quickly. Yes there will be a part 3! Subscribe to the series so you don't miss it when I post it, but again it might be a few days. Thank you to every single person who has been reading along, leaving comments and frankly brightening my day. I have seriously loved writing this. 
> 
> Feel free to come find me on Tumblr, I'm not always on it, but I do try to check: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/heather-long

**Author's Note:**

> So, I said it might be a bit. Apparently they are not interested in waiting. I don't promise to post every day, but you never know. My soul is still aching from Endgame.


End file.
